The only way is up for female engineers willing to travel

WILD GEESE: Áine Brazilvice-chairwoman, Thornton Tomasetti, New York

FOR ÁINE Brazil, the structural engineer who emigrated to a city with little building land left, the only way was up.

In a 30-year career with New York engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, Brazil has led teams behind the design of more than three million square feet of high rise office space in the Times Square area alone.

With notable projects including the 54-storey Bloomberg L.P. headquarters at 731 Lexington Avenue, the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s West Side and Eleven Times Square, a 38-storey, 975,000-square-foot office tower, she has more than left her stamp on the skyline of her adopted city.

“I think I always had an affinity for just physically putting things together, even going back to being a child with Lego,” she says.

Graduating with a degree in engineering from NUI Galway in 1977, her path was one less travelled by girls at the time. But her leaning towards the sciences was always encouraged at school.

“It was a small school with only 120 students and I had a math teacher who came in on Saturday mornings to teach the three girls in my class who wanted to do honours maths. She gave up her Saturday morning to come in and teach us,” recalls Brazil of her Salerno, Salthill, education.

“They had a H.Dip teacher teaching me physics and chemistry – I was the only one in the class – so that I could take the engineering degree.

“There was recognition in our school that you should really be given the opportunity to do whatever you wanted. My parents were the same. They felt there were no boundaries and I came to college with that thought.

With few jobs on graduation, Brazil headed to London with building firm Arup and then back to Dublin again when the economy picked up.

Completing a Masters at Imperial College in London, she was soon on the move again. Her boyfriend at the time – now her husband – was keen to return to the country where he was born, so in 1982, she moved to New York.

“I wanted to spend a couple of years there to get broader experience. I wasn’t intending to emigrate and stay,” she says.

But the Big Apple bit. “When I arrived in New York, as a place for a structural engineer, it was just fantastic. It’s the centre for a lot of work done around the US but also around the world . . . I enjoyed living here but I think the work was the major contributor in deciding to stay.”

Brazil joined a 45-person engineering firm called Lev Zetlin and got stuck in immediately, working overtime her first weekend. With the firm now called Thornton Tomasetti and employing 570 staff, Brazil was appointed the company’s vice-chairman in April this year.

Recalling standout projects in her career thus far, she mentions New York Hospital.

“It has been in existence since the early 1900s and was built on lots of pieces of land around 68th and 71st streets on the east side of Manhattan – so there was almost no land in the area and there hasn’t been for the past 30 years. The only way was up and over the Franklin D Roosevelt highway.

“The highway is six lanes wide and goes right beside the river so the entire hospital sits on top of trusses that span from one side of the highway to the other.”

While recession saw a drop in work on public and commercial buildings and some cuts to staff numbers, Brazil says Thornton Tomasetti’s ability to diversify into new sectors and services has seen it “come out of this stronger than we went in” with staff numbers on the upswing again.

With her company behind several of the world’s tallest buildings, Brazil is currently working on designing the world’s next tallest building, the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia. As we speak, Brazil is in Miami working on a hotel and leisure development. Actively involved in programmes to help inner city high schoolchildren understand more about careers in the construction industry, Brazil is also keen to see better retention of women engineers.

“After a number of years, they leave the profession and we are trying to understand why and figure out how we can hold on to their talent. As a profession, we need the abilities of strong, talented women.”

To Irish engineering graduates considering travel she says: “It’s not a big leap in your life to take a couple of years to say, I’ll try this out for two years. Broadening your experience by emigrating can be a very positive thing, even if you end up coming home after two years. Get your foot in the door somewhere, get a little bit of experience and you never know what might happen.”