“Engineering is important because it keeps the world moving and solves real problems.”

02 July 2026

With International Women in Engineering Day taking place last week, Avanti West Coast’s Class 390 Contract Production Manager, Irene Pacheco speaks about how she wants to inspire more women to join the industry by highlighting the vital role she plays in delivering for customers every day.

Avanti West Coast’s Engineering Team play such a major, yet hidden, role in the lives of our customers. Every day many hours of work go into ensuring that our train fleets are ready to get them where they need to go.

In my role, which I started in 2022, I lead Avanti West Coast’s maintenance of our iconic Class 390 Pendolino trains. It is my responsibility to ensure that we have the required number of these trains in service every day to deliver the timetable punctually for customers. Working closely with colleagues in our control team and at Alstom – who carry out the maintenance work, I make sure that every train that leaves its depot is clean, safe and reliable.

In times of disruption or having more trains than planned with faults, it makes my job more fast-moving and certainly more of a problem-solving challenge.

I’m honestly grateful to have such a hard-working team behind me that are committed to driving tangible improvements in fleet reliability.  Together we analyse our train service performance to understand what delays are caused by the train units, as well as track trends to implement modifications to avoid them having those same failures again.

As a team, we try to have fun, and not every day goes according to plan - but we don’t give up, we carry on!

I feel really privileged to do what I do on a daily basis, and I really want to inspire more women to get into engineering. When I joined 16 years ago, there was only one woman in the Fleet Team—now there are five. Things are certainly changing, but there is still more to do.

I feel that there are some blockers to the role. One being a massive misconception that engineering is too complicated or only for certain people – it really isn’t! It’s about practical thinking and solving problems. If you enjoy fixing things and finding solutions to challenges, engineering is for you. Some people new to the role fear making mistakes, and they shouldn’t fear. We don’t always get it right, and that is okay, it is part of the learning.

"It’s rewarding knowing that we help thousands of people travel across the country every day."

For me, engineering is important because it keeps the world moving and solves real problems. My advice to the next generation of female engineers is to believe in yourself and don’t feel that you have to wait until you are ready, or wait until you have a perfect plan – just start somewhere and get stuck in, ask questions, and learn as you go.

I am a massive believer in having diverse thinking within the workplace – everyone has a part to play and everyone one has the same platform to bring forward new ideas and ways of thinking. That is the only way we can grow as a team and get better. Technology is forever changing and we need to constantly understand customer behaviours to ensure our trains deliver to their expectations. The next generation of train engineers bring new, fresh ways of thinking to ensure that Avanti West Coast remains efficient and an industry leader.

I love what we do because it’s rewarding knowing that we help thousands of people travel across the country every day.

Throughout my time on the West Coast, I’m really proud of the relationships I’ve built within Avanti West Coast, and externally with Alstom and Network Rail. We all work towards a common goal of delivering for the customer, and when you are able to do it in such a collaborative way it really gives you a sense of achievement.