In our ‘day in the life of’ blog series, we aim to showcase the work of our talented team and help you get to know the faces behind our projects a little bit better. This month we sat down with Angus, one of our Civil Engineers, to chat a bit more about the most enjoyable aspects of being a part of our engineering team, and his best advice for someone studying to become an Engineer.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what attracted you to becoming an Engineer?
Growing up I enjoyed the outdoors and loved to build, whether it was treehouses or billycarts or bike jumps. At school I preferred math, physics, and technology subjects, and by the time I entered my senior year of school I knew Engineering was the career I wanted to chase. I completed work experience with my local council in the Civil Engineering department and really enjoyed it, so a Civil Engineer I became!
Walk us through a typical day in your working life. How do you usually start your workday and what are the most enjoyable parts of your day?
My typical day starts by preparing my list of tasks and actioning items from other team members or external parties. The tasks vary from day to day, but usually consist of civil design, water and sewer design, reviewing drawings, report writing, responding to contractor and client queries, and my favourite: site inspections.
What’s it like being a part of Barker Ryan Stewart’s engineering team? Are there any stand-out projects that you’ve enjoyed working on?
Being a part of the engineering team is great, we have a unified team working from multiple offices with a huge base of experience in a variety of fields so you know there’s always someone who can help with an obscure question or design solution. The variety of projects in the engineering team is great too.
It’s hard to pick one, but a project I found really rewarding was the large-lot subdivision at Maitland Vale. It’s a project I was involved in from design, to project management, to authority approval, and completion.
What’s been the most memorable aspect of working at Barker Ryan Stewart so far?
The moving of offices from PCB to BRS was no small feat, both in the physical aspect of shifting furniture and machines to the digital aspect of migrating the IT systems and data. It was a great effort to be a part of.
As a side, the last BRS Annual Conference was a great couple of days, I’m really looking forward to the 2022 installation!
Looking back at your career, is there anything that’s surprised you about being an Engineer?
At school I was never a fan of English, and during my work experience and undergraduate work at council I was spoiled by a plethora of design and site work. Now days a lot more of my time is spent writing correspondence and engineering reports, I’m sure a younger me would be surprised by this!
Do you have any advice for someone studying to become an Engineer?
- Apply for undergraduate jobs while you’re studying, it’s a great way to get exposure to the industry and firm up which avenue you want to get into. The real-world experience will help with your study too.
- Make friends in the industry, networking is so valuable and there’s so many people with so much knowledge to share.
- Don’t be disheartened by the big assignments and late nights at university/TAFE, it gets better once you’re in the workforce and getting paid.
Want to get to know our team a bit better?
Check out our other ‘day in the life of’ blogs to learn more about our team.
