Vodcast

EP 03. Engineering a safer Mildura

Meha Patel: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Future Makers podcast. I’m your host Meha and today we have our first interstate guest from Victoria. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Liam. Liam, would you like to give us a quick introduction?

Liam Wood: Hello, thanks for that. So I’m Liam Wood and I’ve been working at the Council for just over two years now and my job is, my role is design engineer. So some of my jobs are designing roads, footpaths and drainage and I love it. It’s my favourite job, so it’s been good.

Meha Patel:
And you mentioned you’ve been at Council for 2 and 1/2 years. So can you share with the audience on what your educational and career background and how did you get into this role?

Liam Wood: So basically in year 12 I did a lot of maths subjects because I always liked maths, and the obvious choice from there was to do engineering kind of, I always knew I had kind of a foot in the door there. I knew I wanted to do that. So, I got into an engineering course down in Melbourne at Swinburne University and that was a Diploma of Engineering. And so that was a one-year course and because that was kind of just a sample to try out what engineering was going to be like and it ended up being during COVID so, it made a little tough to really get an understanding of what it was gonna be like, but I still enjoyed it. 

So after that year, I wanted to get actual field experience and see what the actual job was gonna be like. So I ended up knowing one of my brother’s friends who worked at council, and I was just asking him about just engineering in general, not looking really for a job, but just wanted to get to know more about the work. And he actually offered work experience at council. And immediately I said ‘yeah, that’ll be awesome.’ And within a week, I had got a month work experience at council to gain more understanding. So I come on my first day, I got here and everyone was, I was a bit nervous, but everyone was super welcoming and we got to meet everyone, all the different teams. And so from there, I completed my month and I got offered to be extended to the end of the year.
So I was kind of deciding whether I wanted to go back to uni, but I was enjoying working a lot so I thought it might as well stick around so, so I stayed for six months and I was kind of, there’s multiple engineering teams here at the Council. So I was doing a variety of the different jobs and at the end of the six months, a position came up as Design Engineer, which was kind of where I fit in the team. And so I went for the job and now I work full-time. So it’s been awesome.

Meha Patel: That’s amazing. Oh, that’s great. And what was your role called before you were a Design Engineering Officer?

Liam Wood: I was just a Student Engineer here at Council.

Meha Patel: OK.

Liam Wood: So my job was mainly to just help out. The first month I was just getting experience, but then as I started to get to know the job better and all the different roles I would help out in all the different departments. So that was sometimes inspections of subdivisions, flying the drone and surveying, and even things like traffic, traffic counts and just things like that.

Meha Patel: That’s really cool to hear. And I think a lot of us want to understand, like, what are your responsibilities in this role?

Liam Wood: Yep. So my main job is, as I said, Design Engineer and at the moment I’m designing a lot of footpaths around town, but I also do a little bit of road design and drainage, so that’s basically just making the plans for them to get built basically. But I also do a little bit of surveying, which, so I go out in the field and that and drone survey as well, which is that’s a bit exciting. So that’s just taking, sometimes I’ll take photos of buildings and stuff and videos that they, anyone at the Council could request it, and I’ll go out and take a video or a photo of a job. But then there’s also sometimes other departments might require a bit of help, extra help with something like going to inspect a subdivision, making sure it’s all built correctly and stuff. And so I’ll go look at, inspect the foot paths and make sure they’re all up to standard.

Meha Patel: So what does a typical day in a life look like for you?

Liam Wood: So I’ll get into work and I’ll have a quick chat with my team and we’ll just discuss what we’re gonna do that day. And they’re always super helpful whenever I have questions and that. So I normally ask that in the morning and then I’ll go check my emails and see if any jobs have come up and that could be something like the drone survey or anything like that or meetings or anything like that. But after that, and I’ve planned out what I’m gonna do for the day, I’ll typically be just at my computer designing the foot paths or roads and stuff like that. And then say in the afternoon I might go outside and do a survey or take some drone photos, which is always a bit nerve-wracking flying the drone, but it’s good to get out of the office as well, because for most of the day I’m generally sitting at my desk, which I do like, but it’s always good to get outside.

Meha Patel: Yeah. No, absolutely. I think you mentioned earlier that part of your job, you really enjoy like the drones and surveying and all of that. Is there anything that you find rewarding or enjoyable that you can sort of expand on in your role?

Liam Wood: Yeah, so. Oh, I really enjoy working with the team ’cause they’re all like, well, that’s probably the main thing – is the team that I work with like, that’s why I stuck around at council ’cause, they’re all they’re just the best. But, something that I’m proud of working is probably the footpath program that I’ve been working on, so that’s for all the footpaths being built next financial year and it’s a few kilometres of just footpath that are being filled in where it’s just missing around the town. 

Liam Wood: So I’d plan where the footpaths were going and from there I’d get back into the office and draw them up and make the plans and then they would get reviewed. So that’s exciting.
But one of the other things that I’m pretty proud of would be well, there’s probably two things I’m proud of, but the big light state project that we’ve got currently going on in Mildura, which is a huge light show that has, I think 12,000 lights, which is a big, big tourist attraction at the moment. So my job there was to, well, me and my friend Nick, who is the other surveyor, we went out and set out all the points for where the lights were going to go, using the GPS. So that was a big job. It took us nearly two weeks, but it was pretty important to stake out where the lights were going. But the final product looks really good now because it’s like just a huge light show, so everyone’s loves the light so it’s pretty cool.

Meha Patel: Yeah. Oh, that’s that’s really cool.
I think you mentioned earlier about the drone surveying. That sounds like a really interesting thing. So what’s that mainly about?

Liam Wood: Yeah. So that’s basically there’s two kind of different types is one will go survey the land to just see get the heights and that so we’ll just see what the surface is like. But the other one will be drone photography and video. So that could be literally anything around town. So a new building, a new toilet. I did just yesterday I did a toilet block, I filmed a new one.
There’s other things like we do new parks, schools and stuff like that. Just anything where they want an aerial that they want to use so.

Meha Patel: OK. And then once you’ve got that drone sort of footage, how does that how do you sort of use that into your role?

Liam Wood: I don’t really use it in in my job, but I I’ll go back and process it and then I’ll be able to send it to the person and they’ll be able to just promote whatever their new building is or something like that.

Meha Patel: That’s interesting. I think earlier you mentioned when you first started at Council, they were really welcoming. So I mean, how would you sort of describe the workplace culture at council?

Liam Wood: It’s very friendly. When I got here the first day, everyone wanted to come over and say hello and introduce themself, but I didn’t quite remember everyone’s name on the first day. But now I’ve gotten to know everyone. They’re all super friendly and nice, and just last week as well we had a another work experience kid. He joined and he was there for a week and he was, I think, year 10 and everyone got to know him and took him out and showed him all the different, all the different roles and jobs in the engineering department. And so he had a great week. But overall, everyone’s really supportive of each other, like especially my team. If I have in, I’ve got lots of questions like because I’m still trying to learn as much as I can.
They’re always happy to help out, help me out and just show me just anything really.

Meha Patel: That’s great to hear. It’s nice to hear you’re in a supportive environment.
I think if let’s just say if there’s someone who’s in year 12 who likes maths, who wants to get into an engineering sort of degree, what sort of advice would you give them considering a career in this field?

Liam Wood: Oh, the main thing I would say is just work experience, you can’t really go wrong ’cause you get to see first-hand what the job’s actually like. And there’s always opportunities available. So I’m sure you could reach out to your local council, no matter what department it is and just ask if there’s any positions available for work experience. And, I know for our department we’re always more than happy to, no matter who, just give someone an opportunity. A lot of school kids come through here, council, but obviously I was at university so, anyone’s welcome to come get experience and yeah, you can’t go wrong.

Meha Patel: So coming to our final question, how do you think young leaders in local government can help shape the future of local government?

Liam Wood: I’d say the main thing is technology and things like AI, it’s all becoming very popular, but with something like the drone we use, we take out, that has cut the time to survey something in like a fraction of the time because a drone’s so much quicker and it can go across the land compared to having to walk it or something like that. So it just makes, there’s a lot more efficient ways to do things now that technology’s evolving so, that’s something I’m excited and looking forward to in the future. And just doing things in different ways.

Meha Patel: I think that’s a really interesting answer that we’ve gotten. I think I agree. Technology is the future of local government. So yeah, I think that’s really cool. So that’s a wrap for today’s episode. A huge thanks to Liam for joining us and giving us a glimpse into your journey. It’s been a real pleasure having you on. If you did find this episode interesting, feel free to pass it along to someone who might enjoy it. Once again, thanks, Liam. Bye.

Liam Wood: Thank you very much. Bye.