Commitment
Smith Design Engineering Ltd is committed to providing equality of opportunity and to maintaining a working environment free from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
SDE does not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation — the protected characteristics defined by the Equality Act 2010.
In practice
- Recruitment and selection are conducted against the requirements of the role.
- Development and progression are available on the same basis to everyone in the practice.
- Reasonable adjustments are made for disabled employees, applicants and visitors.
- Accessibility in design. SDE designs to the accessibility requirements of the relevant Building Regulations, and treats accessible design as a functional requirement rather than a compliance box.
Why this matters in engineering specifically
Building services engineering has a narrow recruitment base, and a practice that recruits from the same place in the same way gets the same engineers and the same design habits. That is a technical problem before it is a moral one: the range of buildings SDE works on — healthcare, education, hospitality, industrial, heritage — is served better by people who have not all arrived by the same route.
The practical commitment is that a role is written around what the work requires rather than around who has done it before, and that a route in through an HNC, an apprenticeship or a career change is treated as equivalent to a route in through a degree where the competence is the same.
Raising a concern
Anyone who believes they have experienced or witnessed discrimination in connection with SDE's work is encouraged to raise it with a director. Concerns are taken seriously and investigated, and raising one in good faith will never count against the person who raises it.
Where a concern relates to a project rather than to the practice — the conduct of another party on a site SDE is working on — it is raised with the client and, where the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations apply, with the principal designer.