Engineer Focus – Ross Percival (ELP 2005)

We are proud to showcase engineers who have graduated from our Engineering Link Projects and now are forging their own careers.

Meet Ross Percival.  Since his first ELP in 2005, Ross has graduated from CQUniversity as a Civil Engineer and now volunteers his time to pass on his experience to our current ELP students.

When and where did you attend a TELG project?

I first attended the TELG project in Rockhampton, in 2005. I was a year 12 student at the time, and I was considering my career options. I wasn’t entirely sure if engineering was for me at the time, and I happened to see the TELG experience as a flyer in my school, so I thought, “why not, its like a taste test”.

What are your recollections of the project when you were a student?

It was awesome! It’s one of my happiest memories. It was a unique experience; the classes/activities were eye-opening and fun. Being able to stay in college, to eat there and to taste the college life was fantastic. And the best part was the people; being surrounded by like-minded people, students from other schools who were interested in the same, and older adults who treated me like an equal, not just a schoolkid. It was the start of my life after school.

What first interested/excited you about a career in engineering?

That’s a complex question. It wasn’t so much just one single occurrence or item that interested me in engineering; it was a combination of things. Growing up, one of the first things I loved doing was building lego – not just the playing with it, but the building and creating new things. This later progressed to lego Technic, and I particularly loved the moving parts, the mechanics of the gears and motors and the like. The next step for me was destroying things like the lawn mower or the remote control car to “fix” it, or to make it work better, or to make it shoot flames.

Secondly, when the time came in the last two years of high school, I had to make a decision about what I wanted to do when I left. I had worked hard at school, and I did reasonably well in maths and science. I don’t enjoy pure maths at all, but I do get satisfaction out of applying maths to for something useful. Likewise for science; I am not a scientist in the pure science, as I am more interested in what I could apply the science to.

Thirdly, I knew that I wanted to do something tangible in my career. I wanted something with a mixture of indoors and outdoors, of some level of excitement and interest, and a combination of theory and practice. Engineering seemed like a great place to start; it gave me the opportunity to apply science and maths to solve real-world, practical problems. It gave me the opportunity for both theory and application, and it gave me the opportunity to work in different places in a range of different situations, projects and obstacles.

It also provided a career path with strong employment opportunities, not just here, but overseas also. But most importantly, it was a career path that provided me with a wide variety of scope and choices; that’s the thing about engineering,

What do you do now?

Now I am employed as a Civil Engineer. I would describe the work as a combination of Engineering, Project Management and Contract Administration. My current role sits within the Construction Industry, in the Transport Infrastructure sector. My primary job usually involves the design, construction and delivery of road infrastructure, including pavements (the engineered layers of gravel, concrete etc that forms the structure that vehicles drive over), road furnishings (guardrail, signage, electronic systems, line marking), surfacing (asphalt and spray seals, the black material that the tyres are driving on) and culverts (pipes and drains that direct water around and under the road).

Any interesting places you’ve been / projects you’ve worked on?

Lots! The thing about engineering is that no two jobs are ever the same. My work has involved a huge variety, from reconstruction of rural roads, literally hundreds of kilometres from no-where, to constructing urban intersections complete with complicated traffic management infrastructure, to noise barriers (to reduce noise impacts), to reconstruction of airports and marine infrastructure.

Any advice for students today?

Chase your dreams; if you never try, if you never start, if you never attempt it, then you will never get there. If there is something that you want to do in your life, be it a career, a lifestyle, a contribution or to change something – start now. Don’t wait for “one day”, start taking the little steps towards what you want today.