Openreach Praises its UK Engineer of the Year 2023 Winner

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has named Glenrothes engineer Lee Carmichael (40), who installs full fibre (FTTP) broadband around Fife in Scotland, as their ‘Engineer of the Year 2023‘ for his repairs, installs, out-of-the-box thinking and support for colleagues.

As well as being presented with the award, the 40-year-old, who has been with the company for 18 years after first joining in 2004 as an apprentice, was given an Openreach van with a special “OR23 ENG” licence plate and £500 to spend.

Lee’s day-to-day work sees him tackling challenges in the network and giving advice and support to colleagues who are facing issues. He also ‘buddies’ with less experienced engineers, giving them tips and helping them develop, and fine-tunes his own skills by working on repairs and installs.

Lee Carmichael said:

“It was a bit of a shock when I won. It’s been getting a lot of attention from my colleagues. They like to wind me up about it – cheering and clapping when I come into work.

It’s unbelievable and been a bit of a whirlwind. I thought it was amazing that I got to go to London, stay the night, see the BT Tower, and go to the event. I was nominated for Exceptional Engineer and was chuffed when I won that. Then they came to the Engineer of the Year award. They gave an introduction about the winner, talking about this person working in the north – I was quite oblivious.

Then they said they were sitting in the front row, so I started looking across for the winner. And then they said my name.”

Last year’s winner was Luke Picken, who was said to have worked around the clock across South West Scotland to keep people connected to their broadband ISP and phone connections in the wake of Storm Arwen (November 2021).