A team of engineers who worked to encourage more girls to consider engineering as a career have been shortlisted for a national award.

Sophie Dent, Lauren Eastburn and Beth Howarth-Henry, who work for BAE Systems, are in the running to be recognised in the inaugural Maritime UK awards.

The trio worked with Girlguiding North West England to develop Clever Cogs, a badge which has now been completed by over 20,500 girls and young women across the UK since it was launched in 2017.

Since then they have received the BAE Systems Chairman’s Gold Award, the company’s highest internal recognition for outstanding effort, and earlier this year travelled to Singapore to work with Girl Guides Singapore to launch a new engineering badge called She Solves. This included engineering and cyber security activities which were offered to 8,500 girl guides.

They have been shortlisted in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) category of the Maritime UK awards.

Beth said: “We are delighted to be shortlisted in the inaugural year of the awards. We started the project in the UK but the international appeal is clear and we’re now working on other projects which will see more badges offered.”

Lauren and Beth are based in Barrow while Sophie has recently taken up a new role at BAE’s air sector.

The awards ceremony, organised by the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership and Maritime UK - the group which promotes the maritime industry – is due to be held later this month.

Ben Murray, director of Maritime UK, said: “Our judges have been blown away by the quality of entries in these inaugural awards. The bar really has been set high.”

The awards ceremony will take place on September 19.