Local engineers honoured for their excellence Friday, 14 August 2015

Four deserving individuals have been honoured for demonstrating great achievements and leadership within the engineering profession at a recent cocktail function held during Australian Engineering Week.

Set around this year’s Canstruction® Brisbane masterpieces, our recent cocktail event was a great opportunity to celebrate the profession and network with other engineering professionals and colleagues in the industry.

The Queensland Individual Award winners were also announced, acknowledged for their contribution to communities, use of sustainable practices and resourcefulness in the planning and solution of design problems.

We are proud to announce the recipients of the 2015 Individual Awards for Queensland Division below;

Professional Engineer of the Year

Rod Bligh FIEAust CPEng

Rod is a founding Director and Principal Structural Engineer at Bligh Tanner. After graduating from UQ in 1983, he worked in the UK at Arup Bridge and Lightweight Structures groups.  Upon returning to Australia, Rod completed a year of architectural studies at UQ, and in 1991, founded Bligh Tanner.

Rod’s expertise lies in heritage structures, façade design, product development, transit structures, and institutional and community building projects.

His contribution to the wellbeing of people and communities is evident in the projects he has worked on along with his role as a teacher and mentor to young engineers.

Rod has been involved in many community pro bono projects such as developing bush housing systems for Cape York Communities, allowing Aboriginal communities to live on their land outside of built up towns. He has also been behind significant advancements in sustainable construction practices such as the world-first use of modern structural geopolymer concrete in the Global Change Institute, which, if adopted more widely, could help to lower the carbon footprint of the construction industry worldwide.

Having run a business for 23 years, Rod has had a significant impact on mentoring and advancing the careers of many young engineers that have progressed into senior roles at Bligh Tanner and in other firms. He has also spent many years teaching structures to architecture students at the University of Queensland, QUT and currently as an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Bond University. 

Engineering Technologist of the Year

Andrew Leeson TIMEAust CEngT

Andrew is the Senior Instrument, Control and Electrical (ICE) Integrity Engineering Technologist for Origin Energy.

In his role, Andrew provides engineering support for Field Operations teams maintaining the availability, integrity, reliability and safe operation of Oil & Gas producing assets by ensuring the ongoing compliance and integrity of all Instrumentation, Control System and Electrical assets.

Andrew regularly participates in Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) studies/reviews of designs. HAZID, Design Review, HAZOP, LOPA, Constructability and Readiness reviews of designs have allowed Andrew to identify the relationship of social, physical, environmental, political, and cultural issues with the proposed engineering solutions.

Andrew has contributed to the engineering community through his involvement in Engineering Technologists Queensland (ETQ) sub-committee of Engineers Australia, National Committee of Engineering Technologists Australia (NCETA) and Queensland Division committee. He regularly demonstrates resourcefulness in addressing problems, identifying different ways to address needs of stakeholders.

Engineering Associate of the Year

Stephen Cullinan AMIEAust

Being a dedicated public servant for some 25 years within the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, Stephen embraced the culture and values established over many years within and external to the department. One of these values – “Customers First” has had direct significance in his day to day work decision making outcomes.

In Stephen’s role as a Principal Designer, he has had many opportunities to review transport infrastructure projects that directly affect the safety and amenity of the communities. On a number of occasions he has undertaken community consultation to gain an understanding and appreciation of their needs and expectations.

His current position enables him to group his previous detailed experience in road design and provide a service to industry on both correct application and interpretation of accepted road design standards.

Over the past 10 years Stephen has been liberal with his time imparting knowledge and experience to other members of the discipline and engaging at different levels, being a mentor to both junior staff and additionally to trainee cadets at the TMR Road Design Training Centre – Toowoomba.

Young Professional Engineer of the Year

Beer Opatsuwan MIEAust CPEng

Beer is a Chartered Professional Electrical Engineer for Energex. Beer joined Energex in 2008 and held a variety of engineering roles in the areas of asset management, technical standard development, network capital investment and planning, substation design, network design, substation commissioning, project management, and smart grid trials initiative.

Beer currently holds a position as the Network Substation Standards Engineer at Energex, overseeing standards, policies and development of a broad range of electricity assets.

Beer is a Standards Australia’s Young Leader and an Australian Young Engineer representative at the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Young Professionals Program in 2014.

In additional to Beer’s normal duties, he is actively participating in Energex’s standby emergency response team as a member of its technical personnel providing support to restore the electricity to the people of South‐East Queensland during severe weather events. Beer is proud to have been involved in helping to restore power during various disaster events including the Gap storm in November 2008 and Queensland flood crisis in January 2011.