Constructionarium Australia's 2022 All-Female Story Bridge Build in partnership with Seymour Whyte as lead contractor, commenced today with the contractor supporting consecutive all-female builds.
Running from 22 June to 1 July at the Construction Training Centre in Salisbury, Queensland, the latest build celebrates International Women in Engineering Day and will see an all-female team build a replica of Brisbane’s iconic Story Bridge.
Weighing in at over 4 tonnes and 30 metres in length, the bridge is the centrepiece of an eight-day training programme designed to provide undergraduate and early career professionals with real-world experience as they manage a major construction project from tender to completion.
As part of the project, Seymour Whyte will support the all-female cohort with project management expertise, mentoring and resources as they tackle the many challenges they will face as they work to deliver their project on time and to budget from tender to client handover.
Will MacDonald, General Manager Northern and Western Regions for Seymour Whyte, outlined the importance of supporting programs like Constructionarium Australia.
“We are thrilled to return as the lead contractor for another Constructionarium Australia All-Female Build. As a sector, it is vital that we invest in the future talent that will shape our industry and highlight the varied career pathways and opportunities available supporting the delivery of major infrastructure projects. Our partnership with Constructionarium Australia for their 2022 All-Female Build is the perfect way for us to support the sector’s future.”
This year, there is something extra-special about Seymour Whyte’s involvement which sees a first for Constructionarium Australia as a past participant leads the build. A cohort member in Constructionarium Australia’s 2021 All-Female Build, Seymour Whyte’s Rychelle Witney, will be project managing the build; the first alumni to do so.
“We are delighted that Rychelle took part last year as a Graduate Engineer, and this year as one of our Site Engineers will be acting as project manager for this year’s all-female build. To go from Grad Engineer participant to project manager in 12 months is a testament to Rychelle’s skills and capabilities, but also shows the positive benefits participating in a build has on the careers of cohort members.”
Harry Hartman of Constructionarium Australia, paid tribute to Seymour Whyte’s leadership, “We cannot thank Seymour Whyte enough for their involvement in another All-Female Build. Without the support of the sector, Constructionarium Australia would not exist and we acknowledge John and his team's passion and commitment to creating positive change. We look forward to welcoming the new cohort of talented emerging female professionals to The Construction Training Centre for their build.”
Day 1 Wrap Up
Today's build commenced the third All-Female Story Bridge Build, part of Constructionarium Australia's mission to improve balance and inclusion within engineering and to promote engineering as a career pathway, so we were thrilled to be joined by 18 high-potential undergraduate, post-graduate and early-stage career professionals to the Construction Training Centre in Salisbury. This is a very special build for Constructionarium Australia for two reasons;
- It’s our first build where a former participant is leading the build as Project Manager, mentor and supporter. Rychelle Witney took part in last year's All-Female build and is back with us passing on her knowledge and experience to this to this year’s cohort.
- It’s our first build with a Service Dog! Quigley, the beautiful black lab in the pic supports one of our cohort members and we couldn’t be happier to have them with us. Meeting him today, we are sure he will share a good number of tail wags and make himself available for numerous pats when he is off duty!
Following early introductions, the program kicked off with Harry Hartman introducing the team, providing an outline of his construction philosophy (and Australian Tradies' obsession with Bunnings) and an overview of the expectations that we have of our cohort and what they can have of us. This is particularly true of safety, something we take seriously on every build, but particularly build with undergraduates and participants with limited live site experience, and armed with the benefit of experience, Rychelle took them through the importance that safety will play at all times, but particularly next week when we enter the build phase.
Our cohort then introduced us to their world, a simple way of learning about each other, their work histories, studies, heritage, ambitions and more.
After a quick session on communications, it was time to split the teams into two for the tender phase. Team Merle and Team Else (named after Cross River Rails tunnel boring machines) were issued with their RFTs and it was down to work, analysing requirements, determining skills, working through deadlines and understanding the challenge that Friday's tenders submission and presentation will pose. The teams also headed onto the construction site for their first look at the structure, the site layout, the road and facilities that will be a part of the build.
We celebrated another milestone at lunchtime thanks to Nelson Ganhao of HDR as we realised this is our10th Story Bridge Build! As the designer of our replica structure, it was fantastic to hear from Nelson about how he went from a conversation "We need to design a mini Story Bridge" to creating our little icon and ensuring that it was not only a challenging structure to build, replicated the methodology and philosophy of the original bridge, but also was able to be constructed and deconstructed many times.
The afternoon was spent getting to know the systems that will support the teams during the tender and construction phase of Constructionarium Australia. Rychelle, Harry and Neil took the teams through their collaboration platform in reference to Construction Methodology and we were joined by our good friends at Bentley Synchro for a session on their Perform Platform which will be used for site activities, cost control, project controls and scheduling. As with all builds a lot rides on the cohort's ability to deliver on time and to budget. Simply put, the bridge can not open late and the end-of-build celebrations will be very limited if a profit isn't made.
So, that was day 1. Over the next 8 days, we have some amazing leaders from across the industry joining us for presentations, lunch and learns and panel discussions. Don't forget to follow our LinkedIn Page to stay up to date on the 2022 Constructionarium Seymour Whyte All-Female Story Bridge Build.
