By Ronelle Richards
Today is Global Day of the Engineer and Australians are being asked to thank an engineer for their contributions.
People have taken to Instagram to thank engineers for things like mobile phones, Google and Wi-Fi.
Global Day of the Engineer aims to celebrate the accomplishments of engineers and give the next generation of engineering students a chance to learn aboutthe innovations possible in their field.
Engineers Australia CEO Stephen Durkin, a civil engineer, spoke with SmartCompanythis morning about the work of Australian engineers.
“We think it’s really important that we work alongside the international engineering community to work along and celebrate the contributions of engineers and to share with the community at large some of the innovations engineers are involved in every day,” Durkinsays.
Durkin has a number of personal favourites,including the cochlear hearing implant, iconic hills hoist and the black box recorder.
He says the role of engineers will be increasingly important as the population in Australia continues to surge.
“Engineers will play a key role in terms of infrastructure planning,” he says.
“Part of why we’re wanting to reflect on the role of engineering because quite frankly we don’t have enough engineers for all the work coming in the next decades.”
Durkin is also keen to portray a more contemporary picture of engineers, with much of their work different than what the general publicmight imagine.
“The modern engineer is very much about innovation, creativity, teamwork and about leadership,” he says.
Engineers Australia is the peak body for engineering, representing more than 100,000 members across Australia.
Durkin says working as an engineer can be an exciting and rewarding experience.
“My advice would be that you can do some really exciting things in your career working as an engineer. You get to travel a lot, personally I’ve worked as an engineer in Canada and many parts of Asia,” he says.
Durkin says Engineers Australia have just opened a new chapter in the Middle East, with opportunities for students to work on projects overseas.
There are a number of innovations and inventions Australian engineers are responsible for.
Arthur James Arnot travelled from his home country Scotland to Melbourne, to help build a power plant for the Union Electric company in 1889. That same year, he was awarded the patent for the electric drill.
Invented by Professor Graeme Clark, the first cochlear implant was implanted in Melbourne man Graham Carrick in October 1982. After switching on he was able to hear for the first time in 17 years. Today the bionic ear restores hearing for thousands of people.
In 1980, with $130 000 government assistance, Bruce Thompson an employee at plastic company Caroma developed a cistern with two buttons and flush volumes. Today the dual flush is used in more than 30 countries.
In the 1950s Dr David Warren, a scientist at the Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Melbourne, came up with idea for a machine that would record the voices and instrument readings in the cockpit of an airplane.
Baby capsules have been keeping newborns safe since 1984, when Bob BOtell and Bob Heath developed the ‘Safe-n-Sound’ Baby Safety Capsule. It was designed to lock into a standard-sized car seat, and is still considered to be one of the safety child restraints on the market.
Polymer banknotes were first developed by the CSIRO in conjunction with the University of Melbourne and the Reserve Bank of Australia, and have been used since 1988. Polymer banknotes are harder to forge and are much better for the environment because they last longer than money made from paper.
This piece was originally published on SmartCompany.
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