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Catching up with Councillor Adam Hain (Moreton Bay Regional Council) at the Under 35s welcome luncheon.
IPWEAQ Board members including Gerard Read on hand at the Under 35s Welcome Luncheon.
Project Manager since April who now retires owing to health issues. Thank you, Trevor, for your drive and enthusiasm for the project. And we are delighted to announce that Premise Engineering have kindly volunteered the services of one of their senior project managers, Elizabeth King to take on this role. Liz comes to us with a strong background in land development, civil engineering, communication, negotiation and local government, all of which will be of great value to the project.
Prior to joining Premise, Liz was the Principal Development Engineer at Moreton Bay Regional Council. Finally, thank you to everyone who joined us for the 2018 IPWEAQ Annual Conference on the Gold Coast. It was a huge success with 485 conference participants who, together, created a great atmosphere and sense of community. The Excellence Awards gala dinner and ceremony showcased what we can achieve for Queensland communities.
The people awards are also critical to our sector to acknowledge individual contributions. I don’t wish to single out any of our five winners for special attention however it is important to reiterate why we continue with an award for Woman in Engineering. While a woman can be nominated and win the Engineer of the Year award, the particularly low numbers of female engineers in our sector means we do need to continue with this award for a few years yet. Only 15% of engineering graduates are women and by the time women in the industry are in their 40s, this is reduced to 2%. With such a low number of women in the industry, it is critical that we celebrate our successful women. I feel very proud and privileged to have been your president for the past year. Thank you for your support and thank you for continuing to make IPWEAQ something special for all of us. Enjoy Christmas and the New Year and I look forward to seeing many of you – in person and online – at the 2019 President’s Breakfast in February. Seren McKenzie President
Engineering for Public Works | December 2018