CBI award for BAE’s Barratt
A WOMAN who made it from an administration assistant to the most senior female manager in operations at BAE systems in Barrow has won the CBI’s First Woman award.
Helen Barratt, construction capability manager at BAE Systems Submarine Solutions in Barrow, won the award for her role in ensuring that 1,700 manufacturing staff deliver on the construction requirements of the Astute class of nuclear submarines.
The First Women Awards are presented by the CBI each year to celebrate women who are pioneers in business. This is the second successive year it has been awarded to BAE Systems’ Submarine Solutions, with Rosalind Murray scooping the honour in 2008.
Ms Barratt said: “There are now eight females in my team, and I like to think I have introduced more women into operations, both directly and by showing that a journey previously seen as ‘no entry’ for women is open.”
She joined the business in 1985 as an administration assistant and made moved to the construction side of the business in 1997, working as material control officer on the Landing Platform Dock programme.
In January 2009 she was appointed to her present post of operations submarine construction capability manager, supporting four senior construction managers in controlling budgets of more than £100m.
Other candidates on the short list for the manufacturing section were timber firm executive Penelope Lloyds, Isuzu Truck UK boss Nikki King, and ethical skincare products producer Dr Mah Hussain-Gambles of Saaf Skincare.
