Mathew Brooks MIEAust CPEng NER was announced the Young Professional Engineer of the Year at the recent Australian Engineering Excellence Awards (AEEA) Tasmania 2016.
Mr Brooks has practised as a civil engineer in the consulting industry for the past 11 years. Working on some of the largest infrastructure projects in Tasmania and interstate, he is best known for his expertise in transport modelling.
What is your current role and function?
I am currently a Senior Civil / Transport Engineer in GHD’s Civil Infrastructure group and usually the project manager or lead technical professional on infrastructure projects.
What are your qualifications?
I hold a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) (Hons) from the University of Tasmania, a Master of Engineering from Deakin University and a Master of Transport from Monash University.
I completed both my Masters via correspondence to expand my technical skills whilst working full time in Tasmania.
How did you get to your current role?
I started out as graduate civil engineer at Thompson & Brett Consulting Engineers. Within a few months of my commencement, Thompson & Brett merged with GHD and I’ve been at GHD ever since.
As a graduate engineer, I worked on dam and water engineering projects, in particular hydrological/stormwater design and modelling.
This experience led me to joining GHD’s road design team, designing stormwater infrastructure on major projects, such as the Brighton Bypass.
During this time, I was invited to teach stormwater and hydrology engineering at TAFE Tasmania, which I did for two years.
While I liked water engineering, it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my career. A position became available in our Traffic and Transport team, so I took a chance and was offered a role as a transport engineer and transport modeller.
After a few years, I was included on major project bids in Tasmania and across Australia, including the Tasman Highway ramps upgrade, the Brooker Highway upgrade and the planning of the Newcastle Light Rail.
I have since become a Senior Civil / Transport Engineer, leading major traffic studies across Australia.
What does a day in your current role involve?
As I primarily work on the planning stages of infrastructure projects, determining their impacts and how to mitigate them, I do a lot of transport modelling which requires coding on a computer and am at my desk most of the time.
I also get to travel in this role, meeting clients and attending site visits around Australia.
What are you working on now?
Currently, I’m developing a traffic model of the greater Hobart area to test the performance of the road network under different traffic management scenarios, identify any problem areas and propose mitigation measures if required.
What has been a career highlight to date?
Ironically, my favourite project to work on was also my least-favourite.
I was the lead and only modeller in the project team planning the Newcastle Light Rail system. This was a very stressful and politically sensitive project, with every element of my work reviewed in minute detail by all the stakeholders involved. I really didn’t enjoy the constant scrutiny and having to repeatedly justify assumptions and methodology. However, this forced me to grow and develop as an engineer. Both my technical and communication skills were improved immeasurably and it was a real highlight to be selected to work on such an important project.
What do you do in your spare time?
I spend the majority of my spare time either competing in, or volunteering at numerous track and field events around Tasmania and Australia.
Any advice for young engineers just starting their career?
Focus on your communication skills.
It doesn’t matter how good your analysis or design is, if you can’t communicate the results properly you’re not going to get agreement from the various project stakeholders.
Image: Mathew Brooks accepting the 2016 Tasmanian Young Professional Engineer of the Year award at the Australian Engineering Excellence Awards (AEEA) Tasmania, 8 September 2016.