30.08.2023
My Term 2 school holidays have come to an end a few months ago. I got 2 weeks off and did 2 days a week ‘work experience’ with ATC Engineers and Project managers in Kingaroy QLD Australia. It was AWESOME!
When I say work experience it is more of a “see what the engineers do and do a few jobs around the office”.
I also intend to do some short videos and/or some posts on what I was taught by the engineers.
An image of the sub-branches of engineering is below. I want to specialize in the Geotechnical and Structural branches.
DAY 1, TUESDAY
The first day I arrived at the office I was introduced to the engineers and administration staff though many of the engineers were away at training.
It is mandatory that a civil engineer in QLD do a certain amount of hours training in a year so they stay up to date with engineering requirements.
I was introduced to the ATC Engineers project filing system and spent most of the day ensuring all the project files had the required documents printed out. The system is year project. E.g. 23200 = 2023 project 200.
At ATC Engineers the office closes at 5pm and opens at 8am though for Day 1 I was only there from 8.30am-3pm. The other days I was there from 8am-5pm.
After lunch I studied the plans for the new year 11 and 12 building at St Johns Kingaroy that is in construction. I did not understand much of the drawings on Day 1 though by Day 4 I understood the plans much more. I also got to write down questions to ask the team the following day.
DAY 2, WEDNESDAY
By now I felt more relax in the office and with the engineers. I spent the day with an engineer called Phil. At 9am I went with him to a site inspection of St Johns’ foundation pad. I was unable to go on the actual site due to the risk associated with it, though I observed from afar.
When we returned Phil continued work on some CAD drawing for a footpath on Tessmans Rd Kingaroy. This was a great experience as I got to understand the obstacles for a footpath and the reasons for certain design features.
Once that was complete he moved onto a risk assessment for the project. A risk assessment outlines the risk and how it can be controlled and make the risk lower, like in school science reports. An image of a risk matrix is below. It is used to determine the risk of an activity.
At ATC Engineers and Project Managers they have a team meeting at 3pm to discuss projects and reflect on the week. There I got to ask my 5 questions about the St Johns year 11-12 build plans. My questions and responses will be in a later post. Julian, an engineer also gave me homework that was to design two bridges, one that failed and one that worked and why.
DAY 3, TUESDAY
Today I was with an engineer called Julian. The one who gave me the bridge building home work. I did some research activities I was tasked with which include concrete repair research and answering questions by searching through the Australian Standards for engineering for the required information.
Through out my time at ATC Engineers Julian showed me many objects and instruments from his ‘museum’. His ‘museum’ was a collect of engineering tools and technologies used in the construction of infrastructure. This was cool as I got to see the object/s physically. His museum had many engineering instruments and construction technologies though they all were quite small in size so they could all fit in a A4 paper box.
Through out today I observed Julian drafting reports for a concrete repair on a dam and calculations for a driveway widening project at a timber mill which was expanding the mill by adding a glue-laminating (glue-lam) factory. Of course there was also smaller things I am not mentioning.
DAY 4, WEDNESDAY
In the morning I observed Julian again, doing a report for Gordon brook dam concrete repair and driveway widths for a timber mill who was adding a glue laminating factory. After lunch I prepared my bridge presentation to present it to the team at the team meeting. As usual the meeting commenced but in addition I got to present my bridge presentation. The ATC team was quit impressed by it.
After the meetings I went to another site visit of St. Johns and I got to walk on site!!!!! This was because it was the end of the day and most high risks weren’t present i.e. heavy machinery.
Thank you for reading,
Archie
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