A FORMER Wellington School student has been awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours list for services to infrastructure.

Civil engineer Rachel Skinner (née Bass), aged 45, who was at Wellington until 1994, is an executive director and head of transport at consultant WSP Global's UK planning and advisory business, where she leads around 600 staff delivering projects for public and private sector clients.

She has previously been named as one of the Daily Telegraph Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering and as the most distinguished winner of 2017 at the European Women in Construction and Engineering Awards.

She became the youngest ever president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 2020.

She has been involved with the Institution of Civil Engineers since 2003, when she became a chartered engineer, and is a fellow of the institution (FICE) and sits on its trustee board.

Rachel helped to set up the Women in Transport network in London in 2005 and is now one of its patrons, having been a founding member of its board and president from 2009 to 2013.

She works to encourage schoolgirls into taking up STEM subjects.

She is also the lead author of papers on the implementation of driverless vehicles and various prior publications on the application of digital technology to the construction industry, collaboration and innovation.

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