Image: Professor Charlie Fairfield measuring water quality parameters in an irrigation channel in the Kambaniru River catchment (Sumba, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia).
Industry-linked, needs-based research projects are the key to successful academic research believes Professor Charlie Fairfield, Power and Water Chair of Sustainable Engineering at Charles Darwin University. We caught up with the Professor to find out more about his career and the projects his team are currently working on.
Tell us about your career journey.
I decided to do a PhD through industry so that set me off on a blended role as consultant and academic.
Our team, back in Scotland, took on research contracts and consultancy projects for a world-wide client base: that, allied with my teaching duties, a raft of publications, and PhD completions, led to promotion to Professor of Civil Engineering in 2008.
A chance email about a post vacant in Darwin led to a phone conversation in late October 2012, a Skype session that December, and I was on a plane a week later from Edinburgh to meet the team at Charles Darwin University (CDU). My wife’s a nurse so emigration was a simple step for us and by June 2013 we were both working in the NT.
What inspired you to become an engineer?
More “who” than “what”: my father, he’s a civil engineer, a lifelong contractor, and a keen tutor himself.
From my earliest baby photographs taken on the old M6 motorway contract in England’s Lake District next to an RB-22 cable backhoe excavator in 1968 to discussions as a six year old about “Dad, how does a dam work?” and onto earth-moving operations optimisation and plant allocation on linear civils infrastructure projects, my father has always passed on his life’s experience and knowledge of contracting and engineering.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Leading, teaching, and indeed learning from, my thriving Water Engineering Research Team. From Post-doctoral Research Fellows, PhD and Master of Research (MRes) scholars, to the thriving crop of industry-supported MEng and BEng thesis students in my team. They all keep you grounded, they are fantastic to work with, and when you see them graduate, or have one of those supervisions where things just “click”, well, you would do your job for free!
What has been your career highlight to date?
My first big research grant back at Edinburgh Napier University: the realisation that, at the age of 28 I am now Project Manager, leading a team investigating soil-structure interaction in buried utility pipe networks and the feeling that you are now recognised for your ability and intellect by your seniors and peers.
What projects are you currently working on?
My team are involved in projects on three of the Top-End’s major rivers at the moment:
Mary River
To understand the effects of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal wetlands and mangrove stands, PhD student, Mike Miloshis is currently running hydrodynamic modelling and acoustic Doppler current profiling to calibrate our model.
Adelaide River
We are working with Power and Water Corporation (PWC)’s Water and Sewerage Services Team to develop baseline bathymetry and a flow model for an off-line water storage scheme.
Daly River
Research Fellow, Dr Peter Novak is working with Zoe Knight from Aurecon as she develops her MRes investigating the links between river flow, bank slope stability, and soil erosion.
Additionally, PWC’s Living Water Smart Programme sponsors a team of my MEng and BEng thesis students to develop water demand reduction models. This work looks likely to feed into CDU and PWC participation in the highly successful Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) on Water Sensitive Cities.
Across the team we have developed some really powerful synergies with PWC, several NT Government departments, CDU’s Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, and our Schools of Engineering & IT and the Environment. To continue to strengthen this link between academe and industry, I also work at PWC’s Ben Hammond Complex one day a week.
We hope that these projects will provide positive impacts for the future of NTs waterways and community, but the most subtle and long-lasting benefit is the legacy and culture of industry-linked, needs-driven research and the advantage to our students who get the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects in the NT.
Do you have any advice for young engineers just starting their career?
Volunteer for stuff. Take on more than you think you can, fill each waking hour and thrive under pressure. If I may give you an example, CDU thesis student, Mr Bijay Lamsal, has just won an AINSE Scholarship in support of his research into groundwater on the island of Sumba, Indonesia. Personally, I am so proud of him, as he volunteered, blasted out his application over Christmas and has pushed himself along.
One more piece of advice, select a mentor. Select wisely, subtly, and indirectly. It cannot be forced, it cannot be formalised, but when it gels it’s amazing. You need a mentor throughout your career, you never stop learning, so in your next role, be prepared to seek a new mentor and let yourself be mentored.