Engineers honoured at Westminster Abbey thanksgiving service

The multi-faith service, which was timed to celebrate both the government’s Year of Engineering and the bicentenary of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), included personal testimonies from engineering ambassador Roma Agrawal MBE, Associate Director at AECOM and famed for her work on The Shard, and Colonel Deborah Porter, Deputy Commander of the Defence Medical Group, on how engineering has changed their lives and enabled them to help and inspire others through their work.

Colonel Porter detailed how injured soldiers are benefitting from the astonishing engineering advances being made in prosthetic technology. In what must surely be a first for the Abbey, she even discussed the emerging field of osseointegration – in which prosthetic devices are connected directly to a patient’s bone.

The opening address was delivered by Professor Dame Ann Dowling, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She began by quoting The Duke of Edinburgh who, when asked to describe the profession, once said: “Everything not invented by God was invented by an engineer.” Dowling went on to celebrate some of the great British engineers of the past, including Thomas Telford and Robert Stephenson, who are buried at the abbey, and Sir Frank Whittle, whose achievements are celebrated on a memorial stone within the abbey.