Clifton Suspension Bridge master mentoring other women

The first female bridge master on Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge has said she would like to see more women in engineering.

Trish Johnson, from Filton, has been the bridge master for the last eight years, tasked with looking after the structure, which is managed by a private trust.

She is currently overseeing one of the biggest restoration projects on the bridge, which was opened in 1864.

“The majority of the metalwork on the bridge still exists from the time of Brunel. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep it going,” Ms Johnson said.

The iconic structure was designed by British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel who died in 1859 so did not get to see it completed.

It carries vehicles and pedestrians between Clifton and the North Somerset side of the bridge.

“We have a five-year plan and are trying to manage the works so we don’t have to do it all in one go,” Ms Johnson, a civil engineer, explained.

“We want to keep the bridge open as much as possible to our users.”

“It’s hard to deal with [metal] fatigue and how much the bridge can deal with loading.

“The main concern would be if we got a wind hitting it in the right angles. With climate change, winds are increasing in intensity.”

Ms Johnson mentors other women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) through the programme Women Like Me.

She hopes to motivate other women to go into similar fields.

“I got involved in STEM because I’m a bit of a maths geek but I didn’t want to be deskbound,” she said.

“I’ve always said to school children, everything you do on your way to school has had an engineer’s influence on it – from the tram to the water you drink.

“There’s always a cry for engineers, yet only 10% of women are engineers. The UK is quite unusual for there being so few – in Scandinavian countries it’s nearly 50/50.

“There need to be some young role models. Engineers make such a difference to the world.”