A former pupil of Abergavenny’s King Henry VIII school was presented with her MBE from HRH The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace last Friday, watched by her proud mum, husband and two of her three children.

Engineer Dawn Bonfield (nee Wells), aged 51, was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her efforts to inspire and support women in her chosen profession.

“Receiving the award was a real joy for me, it was a wonderful day,” she said. “I’ve always been driven to encourage more women into engineering - and Prince Charles was very knowledgeable on the subject.”

Dawn is the chief executive of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) based in Stevenage.

She has lived in Codicote, Hertfordshire since 1993 with her husband Dr Peter Bonfield and three children Jack, Joe and Megan, working for companies such as British Aerospace and MBDA as a materials engineer.

She joined WES five years ago as a full-time volunteer, becoming a paid chief executive last year.

With only nine per cent of the UK’s engineering workforce made up of women, the society aims to support women in the profession, encourage education about engineering and work with corporations to increase diversity.

“In the charity’s 97-year history we’ve never really had anyone working full-time before. It has been useful in increasing our visibility,” she said.

Dawn believes engineering is still seen as a traditional male role with too much gender stereotyping in schools and generally but she says WES is at the forefront of changing that situation.

“Stereotyping is the main problem but there’s also the fact that people don’t know what engineering involves and parents don’t think their daughters would be suited to it.

“One of my roles with WES is to give talks in schools, where I focus on the history of women in engineering - their work, for example, on aircraft manufacturing during the First World War.

“Attitudes are changing slowly - there are more young women training as engineers nowadays and working in the lower ranks of the profession but they still tend not to stay on after career breaks.”

Dawn followed in the footsteps of her father, who was a design engineer at Pilkington in Cwmbran, working on summer placements at the factory.

She attended KHS from 1979 to 1983 before studying at Bath University, where she obtained an Honours Degree in Material Science. She was the only girl in her year.

Her parents still live in Abergavenny.

Her husband Dr Peter Bonfield is Chief Executive of the BRE Group (Building Research Establishment) in Watford, a former UK government establishment that carries out research, consultancy and testing for the construction and built environment sectors in the UK.

The couple’s eldest son Jack, aged 21, is following in their footsteps by studying material science at Swansea University. Joe, aged 19, wants to be an actor and missed the MBE ceremony because he was appearing on stage in a university production in Birmingham. Daughter Megan, aged 17, is hoping to pursue a career in anthropology.