A Day in the Life of a Royal Naval Reserves Lieutenant Commander

I am a Royal Navy reservist…

My role is in the Maritime Reserves. I specialise in maritime trade operations which helps provide for the safety and security of both merchant shipping and naval operations. This is a challenging but rewarding role.

I have also attended the Babcock Reserves Conference – this is a clear indication of the company's determination to engage with and provide support for those employees who are reservists in the UK Armed Forces.

Babcock gives me an allocation of special paid leaveso that I can conduct my Royal Navy reserve training and associated duties.

My day job is:

Design engineer.

A normal day for me would be:

I work within a multidisciplinary team where we focus on complex interactions and negotiations soit is always busy. I enjoy this pace of work and the opportunities that it allows for dealing with internal and external capability providers.

Each day I begin fresh by reviewing any email correspondence or tasks that might have come in from the night before. Tackling this straight away frees up my time to focus on other duties such as drawing and design support activities, as well as any meetings. I also attend site visits on a fairly regular basis.

I enjoy the problem solving engineering aspects of my role as it enables me to develop my skills and competence further.

In the last 12 months I have…

• Completely revised the NATO doctrine for my specialisation
• Served as Directing Staff for a practical role based assessment course
• Undertaken strategic level training with the Royal Navy Maritime Battle Staff