The Value of Volunteering to the Engineering Profession Thursday, 12 October 2017

Senior Geotechnical Engineer for Foundation Specialists Group and winner of the National 2016 Engineers Australia Young Engineer of the Year Award, Dr David Lacey is a huge advocate for the benefits of volunteering in the engineering profession.  We asked David for this thoughts around how volunteering can be fulfilling both as a professional, and a person:

Anyone who knows me is aware that I love my job as a geotechnical engineer. Specially, I love the fact that every project I work on is different. My work gives me a mixture of site and office based work as I try to understand what the earth is doing below the existing ground surface. However, although I find I am always juggling work time commitments, I have consistently prioritised a portion of my time to undertake volunteer work in order to support the engineering industry.

In the 15 years since my university studies, I have undertaken various volunteer roles and it is always surprising to me how rewarding it has been to volunteer my time to the engineering profession. I have acted in a number of voluntary capacities, examples of which include interacting with a variety of students, attending university fieldwork courses as a mentor, organising the Australasian Region Young Geotechnical Professional Conferences in 2014 and 2016, and being a long-term member of the organising committee of the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS). Whilst each of these roles has called on me to perform vastly different services, they have unanimously allowed me to meet and interact with great people, provided me with greatly varied experiences and taken me to some very remote places of the globe.

Initially, I found myself in a volunteer role by accident, having just attended a presentation where the speaker suggested that the best roles he had worked in during his illustrious career had all being gained by never saying “no” outright to a presented opportunity, and instead asking himself “why not” to offered volunteer roles. Taking that lesson to heart (incidentally one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received), I accepted an offered role as the organiser of a technical conference and have found significant value in each of the varied volunteering roles I have accepted ever since.

Whilst acting as a volunteer I have found myself inevitably surrounded by likeminded and pro-active people, which I attribute to the very nature of the volunteer role itself. I have always found people happy and fully engaged with their volunteering roles, which I feel can be partly attributed to the freedom of scope which the large range of volunteer roles available affords.

This freedom has allowed me to take on volunteer roles directly related to my personal interests which, in a self-fulfilling cycle, has made me enjoy the role, see value in the time I am contributing and thus make me much more likely to volunteer again. Interestingly, I believe this parallels the wide breath of the engineering industry itself – in which an ‘engineer’ is simply a broad job title and each engineering role is exactly what an individual makes it to be.

Being engaged within industry body or organising committee has also allowed me to undertake projects that are directly related to my own technical interests and skills, continually expanding my own technical knowledge. This is due to the volunteer role commonly requiring me to work closely with people with the same technical interest and attend events that contain information that directly contributes to the continuing development of my engineering abilities.

There are also great benefits from a purely technical and commercial point of view - volunteering has allowed me to create a network of engineering colleagues exponentially faster than would have otherwise been possible. This has given me access to huge diversity in geographical location, areas of expertise, roles and sectors compared to the day-to-day dealings of a geotechnical engineer, resulting in the transfer of ideas and techniques, fostering of innovation, and unique access to specialist advice and commercial engagement.

Throughout my career, a number of mentors have helped me to grow as an engineer.  These mentors graciously and selflessly gave up their time without asking anything in return. I aim to reciprocate their efforts through following their example. Thus, my commitment to being a volunteer within the engineering fraternity allows me to fulfil three personal objectives:

  • To honour and emulate the efforts of my mentors whom have so graciously volunteered their time to help me
  • To build my professional network, connecting me to industry experts, both across Australia and around the world
  • To contribute to the development and growth of the engineering profession for future generations.

In my opinion, the value volunteering for career development, as well as personal and professional fulfilment cannot be understated. Looking back on each role I have undertaken I am often amazed how a single role has morphed from what I initially expected it to entail, or the locations to which it has brought me. For example, the simple action of providing some volunteer work for a course at a tertiary institution indirectly lead to a five-month fieldwork trip to Antarctica (see the photo above!).

I strongly believe that volunteering actively helps other prospective or established engineers, and also provides immense personal benefits relative to the amount of time required to contribute. Based on my experiences I can only encourage others to seek volunteering opportunities.