What's your job about?
I work for Stantec Australia which is an international professional services company in the design and consulting industry. I am a graduate civil engineer and work in the water design team. I am currently working on a dam safety upgrade preliminary design project, a dam raise concept engineering project, LiDAR Survey project and a dam hydropower feasibility assessment project. I also assist the mining team with research and document control on a number or tailings dam projects.
My responsibilities change daily and each project brings its unique tasks and challenges. I am the project engineer for the dam projects, this role may require me to assist the projects technical lead with dam stability calculation or sketching new designs and coordinating between the designers and the technical leads. I am responsible for document control and coordinate requests for information between our technical leads the client. I participate in engineering workshops and assist the technical leads in preparing reports and other deliverables.
What's your background?
I was born in Zimbabwe and have lived in South Africa, America, UK and New Zealand. I have been in Brisbane, Australia for over 11 years. I have had a number of jobs in a variety of industries such as financial services and corrective services and went back to school at 35 to become an engineer.
While at the Queensland University of Technology I completed work experience at the Logan Water Infrastructure Alliance in the project delivery team. I was a site engineer responsible for quality assurance of new water and wastewater infrastructure being constructed. This position gave me valuable experience in how the construction process worked.
I started with Stantec approximately 18 months ago and have found the expense to be extremely valuable, I developed my skills in project delivery, design development as well as client relationship development.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, a good engineer is open to new and innovative ideas and technologies as well as working collaboratively with a team. People with different backgrounds bring new insight to the table and often look at a problem with a new perspective.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The coolest thing about my job is that I get to work with a team that is industry leading and learn from people that literally wrote the book on dam engineering. It is also cool to be working on one of the largest dams in Queensland.
What are the limitations of your job?
There are no limitations to this job, you can travel the world or work on amazing local projects. Stantec supports its staff and there is always someone to seek advice from.
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