Rachelle de Mesa

I currently help and assist in Development Planning and Transport Strategies. I work on both local and international projects. I am usually the person to go to when writing up Travel Plans/Transport Statements and Assessments. I also help out on research for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) - by looking at how this can be incorporated in our projects. I do a lot of precedents study and have been engaged in stakeholder meetings.

My experience at ITS has helped me a lot in my job and career as I was able to learn a wide variety of things throughout my time at ITS. I developed and learned a lot of new skills and because of this I was able to harness this and apply it on my day to day job. ITS has really helped me to discover what I wanted to do in the transport sector.

I chose MSc (Eng) Transport Planning & Engineering because I’ve always been interested in how dynamic our cities are and it’s always been a challenge.

My advice to students interested in this course and a career in transport is that once you get in, there wouldn’t ever be a day that you’d find yourself bored. Every day is always different and that’s what makes it fun and rewarding. If you want to help make a difference, I’d say go for it.

I took part in the ITS Employer Visits, and I would definitely recommend it, the school was very supportive in terms of employment as the employment rates from ITS is quite impressive. I received a lot of help from ITS as well as from the University too. They provide you with so much information and can help prepare you for interviews.

When considering the highlight of my career so far, I think, just working on a lot of different projects and it’s always very different. One minute, I’m working on a transport strategy for a University campus and then the next minute I’m being asked to help calculate required parking spaces for a development in Saudi!

My advice to ITS international students who are seeking work in the transport industry is that it really is very rewarding to work in the Transport Sector, ITS really prepares and provides you with all the skills that you will need (to some extent, even more than the skills that you would expect).