Engineering apprentice Santina becomes youngest winner of prestigious award

Santina Bunting, apprentice in Civil & Ground Engineering with global engineering consultants Arup, took home the top prize at the Greater Birmingham Young Professional of the Year Awards, having also triumphed in the Apprentice of the Year category.

The Greater Birmingham Young Professional of the Year Award 2024 was sponsored by University College Birmingham.

The award was presented during the awards ceremony organised by Future Faces Chamber of Commerce, attended by nearly 500 people at the ICC in Birmingham city centre.

Judges said Santina was “absolutely remarkable at presenting and talking about her journey, with some major achievements”, and they were very impressed with how “she was behind on maths compared to her university peers, so she taught herself A-level maths.”

In her role at Arup, the 19-year-old has grown steadily from developing geotechnical databases and creating drawings for early-stage highways projects to taking on engineering assessments, analyses, and report writing.

Santina is also the voice for Early Career employees at Arup, regularly organising workplace initiatives centred on topics such as imposter syndrome, personal branding and work winning.

Winning the G4C Construction Excellence Apprentice of the Year was another very proud achievement that recognised Santina’s engineering competencies.

Now, as an assistant technician, she is aiming to become an incorporated engineer after finishing her degree and eventually achieve chartered status.

With a passion for promoting apprenticeships and STEM, Santina was recently nominated by the CEO of the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education and invited to the King’s Summer Garden Party at Buckingham Palace for her work on their apprentice panel.

Achieving Distinction grades in all of her units and exams earned Santina the ‘Student of the Year’ award from the head of the Built Environment Department and allowed her to complete her apprenticeship in two years instead of three.

Santina also serves on the UCAS apprenticeship advisory board and regularly collaborates with Pearsons, UCAS and the BBC to promote her journey.