At last month’s 2018 Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards held in the heart of Brisbane, two of the Sunshine State’s individuals were recognised for their exemplary efforts in their respective fields throughout the calendar year.
Meet Stuart Cook and Dr. Harry Asche: recipients of the Young Engineer and Professional Engineer of the Year awards respectively.
For Cook, his experience of finding out the good news was slightly askew in relation to the latter.
“Funny story,” recalls BG&E’s Principal Engineer, who was unable to attend the Awards Night on account of work.
“I missed the event and I was driving home when I received a few messages from the guys on the job (that I am currently project managing). I also got a message from the Project Director from (the Department of) Main Roads and my first thought was ‘oh no – some poor bugger just died’ or something like that.”
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
“It was quite surprising news to see the congratulatory text when I pulled over to read it. I felt quite humbled, to be honest,” said the 32-year-old.
Cook’s case for the title of Queensland’s Young Engineer of the Year was formulated around his input as Design Manager for the Ipswich Motorway Upgrade: Rocklea to Darra. The father of three managed an 80-strong team, incorporating a number of innovative solutions in the execution of the $400M design and construct project.
“We tried to do some unique things on that job… we got some pretty innovative design solutions across the line and we’ve been trying to really push a work-life balance by setting up remote work platforms that allow guys to work from not just the office, but home as well. Not to mention raising a bit of money for Movember while we were at it,” said Cook.
2018 Professional Engineer of the Year Dr. Harry Asche walked a more conventional path, accepting his award on the night from the 2017 recipient, Bill Capati.
Starting his illustrious career in heavy civil structure, Harry’s passion for tunnelling stems from the operation’s need for expertise, risk management and teamwork during design and construction – something that comes in spade-fulls for the Design Director.
Throughout his 37 years in the field, Dr. Asche has held technical leadership roles for a number of significant projects, including West Gate Tunnel and Metro Project in Melbourne, WestConnex2 in Sydney, the TransApex Tunnels in Brisbane, Project Hobson and Rosedale in Auckland, and the South Island Line in Hong Kong.
Despite the colourful CV, Dr. Asche was still taken aback when his name was called on the night.
“The award came as a complete surprise,” he said. “I am very grateful to the various organisations that have supported me: Aurecon, the Australasian Tunnelling Society (ATS), and the University of Queensland (UQ).”
Having worked all around the globe, each of Dr Asche’s projects looks to leave a lasting legacy on those populations.
“Tunnels are a solution in many urban environments which allow us to retain and enhance urban amenity while providing transportation solutions,” said Asche. “In the case of underground rail, providing a new station revitalises the area, something which I have seen in operation in many places.”
Asche’s appointment as Professional Engineer of the Year has come with some advice for the next generation of engineers.
“As I have progressed, I have found a very important aspect in people skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership,” he said.
“Civil engineering is a very rewarding career and it offers a wide variety of opportunities. I have two pieces of specific advice.
“Firstly, do not seek to specialise too early; seek to get the broadest range of disciplines you can. Ultimately, the leadership of major projects can only be provided by people with multi-disciplinary understanding and over-specialised people will be left behind in limited roles.
“Secondly, seek out disciplines with uncertainty and judgement; practitioners of codified and well-defined disciplines will be the first to be replaced by software.”
Harry and Stuart will progress to the National Individual Awards which will be determined at the National Congress Dinner in November.
A number of the State's top projects were also recognised on the same night, a number of which progressed into the final stage of the Australian Engineering Excellence Awards nominations. Congratulations to two Queensland projects that went on to receive Australian Engineering Excellence Awards:
- Leica Geosystems for its Leica GS18 T innovation – the world’s fastest GNSS RTK Rover to deliver fast and simple GNSS smart antenna to surveying and construction, and;
- Boeing Defence Australia’s Currawong Project which delivers a next-generation deployed integrated battleship communications network to the ADF.
RE-CAP: 2018 Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards
You can check out the photo gallery from the 2018 Queensland Engineering Excellence Awards right here.