Question: What's the most challenging thing you've done?

Catherine Conaghan answered on 18 Nov 2014:

Hi Candy, the most challenging thing would have been the software I developed in my last company to building a software model of the building on a PC that represented everything about the building. It took around 18 months to complete, and meant having to spend a lot of time in and out of office hours on all areas of the building, surveying where people/forklifts were going, when lights were turned on, when machines were on/off how much energy every single things took. It was a huge building and very difficult, but at the end of the 18 months we had a model that could almost exactly match everything that was happening in the building – but getting their was painful at times! 🙂

We then used the model to test lot’s of different energy saving strategies, so we could see the results before we actually had to spend any money e.g. replacing the doors, replacing the lights, installing a wind turbine. After testing around 35 different things, we picked the best 18 and made the changes over two years. The company ended up saving a huge amount of money on their energy bills afterwards, the software was also bought by another company to use and I was promoted afterwards – so it was all worth it in the end!