How do you know?

Ayel Osman is about ten when she tags along with her uncles to a building site in Syria. They’re building a house, stacking concrete blocks. There’s a smell of cement in the air. Ayel stands beside them, watching.

“How do you know how to do that?”

“Experience,” they say.

“So how can I get that experience?”

Her uncles laugh.

“You can’t be a builder. It’s too physically demanding. You’ll have to be an engineer instead.”

They’re joking. The women in the family become doctors, nurses and teachers. Not engineers.

But Ayel takes them seriously. And her grandmother, who brings her up, encourages her.

“She had a tough life. But when I told her I wanted to be an engineer, she was so proud. ‘If that’s what you want, go for it. I’ll support you.’”

Then war breaks out, and her education stops. Ayel is fourteen. She spends the next five years unable to study. In 2016, at nineteen, she arrives in Sweden.

“Coming here meant I could study again.”

She joins the International Baccalaureate programme and can carry on studying in English, as she did before. After finishing school, she initially applies to study medicine.

But it doesn’t feel right. So she calls her brother in Luleå. He’s a doctor and one of the people who knows her best.

“I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to switch to engineering.”

“Then do it,” he says. “I’m behind you.”

So Ayel begins studying engineering at Chalmers.

What makes it stand up?

At Chalmers, she finds herself asking that same question again. How do you know a structure will stand up to the forces acting on it?

For their bachelor’s thesis, Ayel and a group of fellow students investigate whether volcanic ash could replace some of the cement in concrete.

“I’m interested in concrete. What it’s made of, how it’s structured and how to make it work.”

The research goes well, and afterwards she helps researchers at Chalmers test more concrete mixes.

For her master’s thesis, she turns to the clay beneath Gothenburg.

Long, slender steel piles extend through the soft clay to support the buildings above. But these piles can buckle, and the soil around them affects how they behave.

Standard calculation methods simplify what happens so engineers can work through the figures by hand. Ayel and fellow student Mahmoud Alhamad want a more realistic picture.

They build a model in ABAQUS and write Python code to automate the calculations. Then they change one thing at a time and run the model again.

And again.

And again.

Before trusting the model, they check it against calculations with known answers.

Those results agree. But for the piles in Gothenburg’s clay, they have no definitive answer to compare their results with.

“I still don’t know if we got it right.”

Their professor considers the work more extensive than a typical master’s thesis. A PhD student is now taking the research further, picking up where Ayel and Mahmoud left off.

Thinking before speaking

But wanting to be sure has its drawbacks. Ayel thinks she takes too long.

“I need some time on my own to look at a problem. Get my head around it and try to work it out before discussing it with anyone. Other people seem ready to talk things through much sooner.”

But the more she explains, the less it sounds like a question of speed. She wants to think things through before she speaks.

“I like listening. If I’m not sure about something, I ask rather than make a statement.”

That’s reassuring. A structural engineer who says “It’ll probably be fine” isn’t much use to anyone.

Joining Poji

On 17 August, Ayel joined Poji in Gothenburg as a structural engineer.

“I like that everyone knows each other here, and that we use code to automate calculations. It’s the same approach we took in my master’s thesis. I hope I’ll get to do more with Python and automated calculations.”

Her first project lands on her desk straight away. Several large modules need to be shipped by sea. Ayel’s job is to work out what happens to them during lifting and transport. What loads will they be subjected to? What needs to be taken into account? Will the structures withstand the entire journey?

This is new territory for Ayel.

“We didn’t even cover lifting and transport at university. So it’s all new to me.”

For now, she does what she always does when she doesn’t know something. Listens. Reads. Tries to understand how it all works.

And she’s joined a team where nobody seems to expect an answer before she’s had time to think.

“People listen. They give you their time and attention, and nobody’s trying to outdo anyone else. I feel really comfortable here.”

A network of her own

Outside work, Ayel is part of another system. The youngest of five siblings, she’s always there when someone needs a hand.

“I help my brothers and sisters move house. I babysit. I help my mum. If my friends and family are happy, I’m happy. I feel responsible for them.”

And that goes both ways.

“It’s like a net. We’re all connected. When I’m the one who needs help, they’ll all be there for me too.”

Arab food wins

Every so often, Ayel takes a break from thinking about piles and parametric studies. Then she eats. After three years working in restaurants, she knows people in the trade all over Gothenburg.

“I’ve eaten at nearly all the good restaurants in town. Every couple of weeks, some friends and I try somewhere new.”

She takes the same approach when she travels.

“I want to try different dishes and find out what everything tastes like.”

She’s put traditional Swedish cooking to the test too. Her verdict? Mixed.

“It fills you up. And it’s healthy. But it feels like it’s made for packing up and taking to work for lunch.”

What about meatballs and mash?

“They’re nice. Nothing wrong with them. But when it comes to food, we win,” she says, laughing.

Getting to the bottom of things

Ayel already has a plan for the next five years. Of course.

“I want to get really good at working with steel and concrete, and especially foundations. I also want to keep learning Python and eventually help shape the way we work at Poji.”

Her plans used to focus mainly on what she wanted to learn.

Now the company has found its way into them too.

“I want to stay here, see the company grow and help it get there.”

Almost twenty years have passed since a little girl stood beside her uncles, trying to understand how they knew where to put the concrete blocks.

She’s still asking much the same question. Only now, Ayel has the tools to work out the answer for herself.