Dr David Lacey MIEAust CPEng NER RPEQ was awarded the Young Professional Engineer of the Year at the recent Australian Engineering Excellence Awards (AEEA) Queensland 2016. He is now eligible to enter the national AEEAs, which will be held in Brisbane on the 23 November 2016 during Australian Engineering Conference.
What is the significance of your award win to you and your career?
It is deeply fulfilling to have been recognised by the wider engineering fraternity. The awards night has widened my perspective to the great projects that we are currently undertaking as an industry. This only encourages me to contribute even more to the great work we, as engineers, do daily.
What is your current job title and function?
My current job title is Senior Geotechnical Engineer at Foundation Specialists Group (FSG). I manage and work on a wide variety of technically demanding projects for both design and construction phases.
Why are you an engineer?
I enjoy being a geotechnical engineer as no two projects ever have the same solution.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on innovations associated with the earthworks component of the Toowoomba Range Second Crossing project. This encompasses both construction and research roles, which I am enjoying immensely.
Most challenging or interesting project you’ve ever worked on?
That would have to be my recently completed PhD research, in which I investigated the engineering properties of residual soils and high weathered rock profiles in Queensland and effective ways to investigate the gradational transition between soil and rock materials.
What has helped you get ahead and what strategies have helped give you the edge?
I think that always being open to engaging in any opportunities that come along has really helped me get to where I am today.
If you weren’t an engineer, what do you think you would be doing?
If not an engineer, I’ve always thought that I would have been involved in either cartography or exploration geophysics. Or I would love to have tried my hand at being a professional winter biathlete.
What do you see as one of the biggest issues facing the engineering profession?
The effective transfer of knowledge between generations and keeping the younger engineers engaged in research and development are a couple of issues that come to mind.
Favourite movie?
The Great Escape (which, now I think of it, is also a movie about engineering triumphs).
If you could have worked on any engineering project throughout history, what would you have chosen?
Based on my viewing of the TV series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, I would have loved to have worked on the construction of the original London Sewerage System, which transformed the city of London in the mid-19th Century. It strikes a chord with me as it was a project that delivered such significant health outcomes for so many, as well as involving a huge amount of earthworks and foundation engineering.
What is the greatest piece of technology released in the last decade?
The Light Falling Weight Deflectometer (LFWD). It directly measures insitu modulus and can be used to demonstrate allowable and ultimate bearing capacities. This is the holy grail for many geotechnical engineers as it both removes the effect of sample disturbance during testing and reliance on generic correlations for parameter estimation.
Image: Dr David Lacey MIEAust CPEng NER RPEQ at the earthworks trials undertaken for the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing project.