You are already good at your job. English is the part that slows you down.
Starfleet has a universal translator. You have a stakeholder call at 14:00 and a client who talks fast.
That is not a competence problem. It is a language problem, and language problems are fixable.
One thing before you read further. I work with engineers who already use English at work and want to use it better. If you are starting from zero, I am not the right teacher for you. My work starts at around B1 on the CEFR scale (intermediate level). Quick test: if you understand about 75% of this page without effort, you are in the right place.
Olivia Augustin: civil engineer and Technical English teacher
I have been tutoring since I was a teenager. Mostly maths, mostly to people who were convinced they had no head for numbers. They did have one. They just needed it explained differently.
Then I spent more than a decade as a civil engineer.
What pushed me into teaching English was this: I kept running into people teaching English for money with no qualification and not much English either. If that cleared the bar, I thought, I can do this properly. So I got qualified first: certified ESL teacher, then certified Business English teacher. Technical English is the corner of Business English I specialise in. And then built the thing I thought was missing.
Since 2019, I have taught Technical English to engineers across four continents. One-on-one, in small groups, and inside companies.
The order matters. Engineer first, teacher second.
Why that combination is the whole point
Most English training for engineers is built by language teachers who have never sat through a design review.
So they teach vocabulary lists. But vocabulary is rarely what breaks your communication.
What breaks it is needing to challenge a client's assumption without sounding rude. Explaining a three-week delay without sounding like you caused it. Saying "I disagree" to a senior stakeholder in a language where you are not sure how blunt is too blunt.
I know those situations because I was in them. That means I know which grammar you actually need, and, more usefully, how much of it you can skip.
English as a tool. Not a school subject.
Who I have worked with
Companies and individual engineers
I have worked with international engineering consultancies and local construction firms. Or as I like to call it: with people. Engineers in infrastructure, HSE, structural design, renewable energy, you name it.
Universities
Three universities have invited me in.
At two of them I taught English for Engineers. At the Universidad de La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia, I worked with PhD students in Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
And at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico, I taught graduate engineering students on Technical English and its importance in effective communication.
At the Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, Germany, I lectured on Systems Engineering instead. Systems Engineering is really a way of developing projects, but it comes with strict rules about how you are allowed to write things down. Which makes it closer to my day job than it sounds.
What the engineers say
"I am in regular contact with customers. As a result of Olivia's tutoring, my confidence grew, and therefore our customer service significantly improved." — Michael v/d K. Mechanical Engineer, the Netherlands
"The lessons I had with Olivia were excellent, no traditional lessons, but a group course with fun atmosphere, with great examples and great cultural experience, I recommend it!" — Rudolf Janzen Junior Structural Engineer, Brazil
What working with me is actually like
Practical and direct, built around your real work. You bring the project you are stuck on. We fix the English inside it.
No textbook dialogues about ordering coffee at an airport, and no homework designed to fill time.
Partnering up with me gets you a nerdy side-kick who helps you every step of the way like Una Chin-Riley and Captain Pike (for traditionalists, that's like like Spock and Captain Kirk).
You can work with me in a small group course, one-on-one, or at your own pace. If you want to hear how I think before committing to anything, the English for Engineers podcast is free and there are years of it.
Your next step
A 15-minute call, no charge, no pitch. You tell me what is slowing you down at work and I tell you honestly whether I can help. Sometimes the answer is no, and I will say so.
Engineers from four continents have taken this call since 2019.
Yours in all things Technical English, Business English, and international project communication,
Olivia Augustin