Jeremy Sequeira MIEAust CPEng NER, an Aeromechanical Deputy Senior Design Engineer, Aerospace Systems Engineering Squadron in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) based in South Australia has achieved his goal since university of becoming a Chartered member of Engineers Australia.
“When I joined Defence I found that they would support us in attaining Chartered, but I needed to build the experience first. It was only a year ago that I revisited the Chartered page and realised I could now demonstrate the competencies with some solid, hard fought examples,” said Mr Sequeira.
Mr Sequeira had always wanted to work with aeroplanes from a young age and for him, “Engineering is the right balance of exercising my brain while still working practically. I’m kept interested by the problem solving and improving our capabilities in flight test.”
When asked what advice Mr Sequeira would give to young engineers starting out on their career paths he advised them to, “Attack every job, trivial or not, with enthusiasm and your best effort; the way you work on things that seem trivial will demonstrate to your supervisors how you will work on more complex work. Listen and learn from the experiences of others, but don’t be afraid to inject your own new ideas; sometimes more experienced engineers need that spark that new engineers provide!”
In building his experience to become a Chartered Engineer, Mr Sequeira has worked on a variety of challenging projects to demonstrate his competency as a leader in his field. “The most challenging was modifying a RAAF KC-30A Tanker this year with strain gauges and a recording system for measuring load in the refuelling boom during air-to-air refuelling. A colleague and I scoped, designed, installed and calibrated the system in 6 weeks before deploying to the US to test it with the JSF. It took all the skill and knowledge from the past 5 years to put it together successfully in such a short period of time.”
In becoming Chartered, Mr Sequeira found that it was the process of reflecting on his developments to date that highlighted the value of Chartered.
“Good and bad decisions, times of trial, challenges, failures and successes are all brought to light which really helps us improve and demonstrate to ourselves our own competency to practice engineering,” said Mr Sequeira.
WGCDR James Blagg, Chief Engineer, Development and Test Wing, Royal Australian Air Force provided a testament to the importance of becoming Chartered.
"The achievement of Chartered status is very highly regarded for professional engineers within the Air Force. Importantly, it provides an independent assurance of the competence of our engineering staff. Mr Sequeira, as one of our civilian engineers, has served the RAAF with distinction through his contribution to PC-9 On-Board Loads measurement, the concept demonstration of wireless accelerometer instrumentation, and the rapid instrumentation of the KC-30A refuelling boom. He is a talented aeronautical engineer, and has a strong regard for professional development, and the award of Chartered Status certainly reflects his professionalism," said WGCDR Blagg.
For more information on becoming a Chartered engineer click here.
Image caption: Jeremy Sequeira (right) receiving his Chartered certificate from Jason Thornhill, Engineers Australia Client Manager SA (left)