Webinars

Water: Our most precious resource. Your most rewarding career.

Devika Mudaliar: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Careers at Council, What do you do at Council? webinar series. My name is Devika Mudaliar, and I am the workforce development consultant at LGNSW, and I will be your host today.

We are excited to have you join us for an insightful and engaging session. Please note that your microphone and cameras are turned off to avoid background noise.
And before we begin our webinar, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today and my respects to Elder’s past, present and future.

Our first webinar of this series is focused on promoting the engineering job roles in local government and the local water utility sector. We are pleased to welcome our two guest speakers.

Melanie Slimming, director, infrastructure and engineering services at Narromine Shire Council and Rachel Abberton, water asset planning coordinator at MidCoast Council.

Their expertise and insights will undoubtedly provide us with a deeper understanding of the engineering job roles. Before we dive into our discussion. I would like to introduce you to Careers at Council. Throughout the webinar, we encourage you to actively participate by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. You can submit your questions using the Q&A feature and we will address them during the designated Q&A session towards the end of the webinar.

So, to begin with, Careers at Council is a unique platform. It is a content and story driven platform. It is an initiative of the state and territory, local government associations. It’s created by councils for councils, and it was established by industry to inform and attract local government’s future workforce and is much more than a jobs board. You can access the Careers at Council platform on your laptop or desktop computer or on smartphone devices.

So, we are active on LinkedIn, Facebook and we also have a YouTube channel.

You can easily access the Careers at Council platform on a mobile device or a portable touch screen touch screen device and on a laptop or desktop as I’ve mentioned.

Job seekers can explore various career areas on the Careers at Council platform by visiting the Careers areas section.

This section provides detailed information about different career paths available in local government, including engineering and asset management, as well as positions in managing water resources. Today’s focus is engineering and asset management, management, and positions in managing water resources.

Each career page provides insights into the roles and responsibilities and qualifications required, helping job seekers find the best fit for their skills and interests.

The types of roles section on Careers at Council provides an overview of diverse job opportunities available within local councils and what we do. This section highlights the task performed for these job roles.

Performance data confirms that more than 10,000 jobs have been posted to date.
500 plus being engineering jobs and they are currently 7 active engineering jobs on the platform.

Our LinkedIn jobs focus posts providing job seekers a better understanding of the diverse career opportunities available in local government, and job seekers can find roles that align with their skills and interests.

Our employee stories, insights and experiences are shared by current council employees, giving you a glimpse into what it’s like to work in local government and our employee testimonials highlight personal experiences day-to-day, insights, career growth and development, skill development, work, environment and culture, making a difference, and community engagement.

These testimonials provide job seekers to gain a better understanding of the diverse and rewarding career opportunities available in local government and how they can make a meaningful difference in their communities by working for a Council.

Joining the Careers at Council community is a great way to explore job opportunities and connect with local government roles across Australia. You can sign up for job alerts, you can attend our webinar series, and we have an upcoming vodcast series as well. You can read employee stories, you can apply for jobs, you can connect with us on social media and become part of the Careers at Council community.
Without further ado, let’s welcome Melanie Slimming and Rachel Abberton to share their valuable insights on the engineering job role. So, to start with our interview series I will go to Melanie first. 

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what initially sparked your interest in engineering and what educational path did you take to become an engineer?

Melanie Slimming: Thanks everyone for joining us here today. Hopefully, you can learn something or at you at least find us mildly interesting, which is the main bit part. 

So, I guess I’m pretty boring really. Cookie cutter, when it comes to this question, I finished school, didn’t know what I was going to do but liked maths and science, so jumped into an engineering degree.

I’m from Adelaide originally, so I just went to Adelaide Uni, went through a chemical engineering degree there. How I became interested in water is an interesting one. 

Whilst I was at uni, I worked part time at a pool shop so I would sell chlorine and acid and all those chemicals to customers, and I found that I’ve really enjoyed like the chemistry behind why those chemicals are good in pools. 

When I finished uni, I was just lucky enough to apply for a graduate position at SA Water.

So, I think my background working at a pool shop helped me look like an attractive candidate for that. So, I kind of just fell into it by luck really, I suppose, like any school leaver I didn’t really know what I was doing. But yeah, just fortunately fell into it.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you Melanie, Rachel?

Rachael Abberton: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining. So, my background is similar to Mel. I always had an interest in maths and science in high school. I was a pretty big nerd, so I was super keen to do engineering at Uni. I did a Bachelor of Engineering Civil.

My interest in the water industry is a bit different, so I lived overseas.

In remote Asia, when I was little for maybe like a year, so over there I came from Australia, I went somewhere where we didn’t have running water. There were no toilets. You know, I would see the locals collecting water out of wells, no reticulated services at all. And then coming back to Australia, I noticed we could drink water out of taps in Australia, which you couldn’t where we were.

And then when I was in uni, we studied water engineering obviously, and my first graduate role was in a consultancy which included groundwater and water resources, and that continued to fuel my interest in the water industry.

I went to Newcastle Uni, and I commuted there from Foster, so a regional area, but I was close enough to go to a sort of a local uni and stay at home.

Devika Mudaliar: Rachel, what was some of the key milestones as part of your career journey?

Rachael Abberton: So I think one of the key milestones so far for me is one of the big strategic projects that I led as part of working for Mid Coast Council. So, it was setting the integrated water cycle management strategy for the Mid Coast area for the next 30 years. And what was so pivotal for that in my career was to set the journey in terms of infrastructure upgrades and what we need to do operationally our spending.

Our goals and priorities strategically for the area that I grew up in, for my home, for the community that me, my friends, my family live in, and that the day that that got adopted by Council and that all that hard work was endorsed and agreed upon, that was an incredibly key milestone for me in my career to date.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you, Rachel.

Melanie Slimming: That’s cool, Rach. I can imagine why that would’ve been. That would have been pretty cool. We’ve actually got that coming up in the next six months and I’m actually looking forward to even though it’s not really my project, it’s someone else’s. I’m looking forward to that as well. I suppose for me, probably the defining moment was I was working as sort of the lead project engineer for a project where we designed and constructed a sludge handling facility at one of our regional wastewater treatment plants.

Rachael Abberton: That’s amazing.

Melanie Slimming: In South Australia, the project probably state government, so it went for ages, but it was probably a good three years where we were doing the design and then we got the design done and then we were doing all the concept design and then we got the detailed design done and then we got on to construction and construction took a while and for me probably the most, yeah life changing I guess moment of that project was seeing the solids go into the project actually turning it all on and then we’ve got you know it was liquid solid going in.

Coming out the end of it, it’s always funny to talk about wastewater and talk about poo, but that was that was really cool. Just sort of seeing that project from right from inception all the way through to completion. I think it was about a $30 million project. So, it was pretty cool to just see that process right the way through and that particular site had so many sludge handling issues prior to the plant being brought in that it was just like such a difference and improvement to that community when that was when that was finalised.

Yeah, I still think about that project and a lot of the learnings that we had out of it. So yeah, it was a big milestone, I think in my career.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you. So, you’ve already mentioned your first job. What does the typical day look like for you as an engineer? So, I’ll just put it out to whoever wants to go first. Melanie or Rachel. Thank you.

Melanie Slimming: Well, I’ll start. So, I don’t really work as a typical engineer. I’m the director of infrastructure here. So, most of my day-to-day life is not your technical engineering. It’s not reviewing documents. It’s not designing things. You know most of the time I’m sort of signing off high level. So, I can’t unfortunately get into the nitty gritty. But, I was sort of thinking about it and I guess the aspects of engineering that I do use every day in my life is lots of decisions, so I have decisions thrown at me all the time and I need to make decisions quickly based on the information that’s available. 

I think that’s something key that engineers have to do. You’ve got some amount of information available. You have to assess it and then you have to go with the best decision. I also evaluate data a lot and prioritise which works, which community group we’re going to support, which community group we can’t support in this time. I think that evaluation of data it’s just something that engineers are good at and that’s something that we can do. And so, I think, yeah, for me it’s lots of decisions, lots of communication as well and that’s what most of my time is spent doing.

Devika Mudaliar: So just building on from that, what sort of led you to become the director, did you have to go various levels to reach the director post?

Melanie Slimming: Yeah, definitely. So, I started off at SA Water as a graduate engineer and I recommend all young people if they can get into a graduate program. A graduate programme or sort of that entry level, it’s great because the company will support you to do extra training, and you’ll also get to double in a whole range of different activities.

For me, the best thing about being a graduate was one of my rotations was in operations. So, my first couple of rotations were in the office. And it was OK, but I definitely didn’t love it. And then I did it a six-month period in operations where I basically got to be a wastewater operator for six months. And for me that was what really sparked my interest. It’s like, yep, I want to do this for the rest of my life. I want to improve things out in the field. I sort of started there and then just grab different opportunities as they came up for me.

One of those opportunities was moving regionally to be able to take on a supervisor.
role. And then when my boss at the time quit, I sort of stepped up and acted in in that role for a little bit of time and then, you know, another job came up, so pivoted into that. So definitely stepping stones. My current job has been quite a big shift because my background is chemical and process engineering. So, prior to being the director at Narromine, I was the water and sewer manager in Forbes, so that was still fairly chemical, but a bit of civil, but now I’ve shifted into the director role.

I deal with roads, which is definitely a civil engineering aspect, so definitely having to upskill in that space to become more rounded, which has been really interesting. I guess my advice to others would just be grab any opportunity. It might not be extra pay, it might not be extra congratulations at the time, but those experiences that I’ve taken on, say, acting for in my bosses role for probably 6 months, I wasn’t actually physically, like reimbursed for that, like it wasn’t perhaps officially I was acting, but I took on those responsibilities. And then in my next job interview, I was able to describe, well, this is what I have done before. So, I really encourage people to, yeah, if you’re interested in climbing that ladder, just grab all opportunities as they arise.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you, Melanie. Rachel?

Rachael Abberton: Oh, wonderful. That was great. Now so I am a coordinator. So just for a bit of understanding. So, Mel, is the director below Mel would be a manager and then below that manager would be a coordinator and I’m at that coordinator level. 

So going back to what Mel was saying and a typical day for me, now that I’m at that coordinator level, I am slightly less technical than what I was in my previous two roles. So, I was originally a water and sewer planning engineer, then I became a senior engineer in sewer and planning and now the coordinator, so I’m a little bit more at that strategic level. I’m making decisions, but still definitely dabbling in and having involvement in the technical side of things.

So, a typical day for me, I would work with the engineers that are that report to me, helping them with their projects. Again, being given information that’s available and making decisions, operational and strategic decisions.

Some days I’m doing project management. I do have projects of my own that I manage. I also do as part of my team assess our networks for capacity, for development, for both water and sewer infrastructure. So, every day is different. The projects that we work on are varied. You know, I have a Dems project, a dissolvation plant project. I learn every day. I’m a civil engineer by background, but some of my projects are more than just a structural side of things. 

I do a lot of hydraulic engineering, electrical, environmental, mechanical, process engineering, so it’s so broad. It’s so varied and it’s so wonderful. Every single day I learn, I am challenged every single day, and I’m also given the opportunity to learn and find out the answer, investigate problems and identify solutions, so it’s very exciting. It’s very varied and it’s wonderful. As someone who’s a nerd and loves to learn and really enjoys maths and science, I’m exactly where I think I’m meant to be.

Melanie Slimming: So great, Rachel. So true about the variability and how good it is, yeah.

Devika Mudaliar: As you’ve mentioned, some of your projects, can you highlight one of the projects that you’ve seen from commencement to completion, and you were really passionate about it to see it to completion?

Rachael Abberton: So in the Mid Coast Council with our capital projects we have two separate teams. So, I’m in the planning team and then next to us we have a project delivery team. So, several of the projects I just mentioned will be with me for the planning component of it, which is the options, the initiation options phase where we look at all options on the table say for a water security solution.

Where could we put this dam and where can we take the water from?

Where could we run a pipeline from on? How do we get it to the water treatment plant? So, all options on the table, we arrive at a solution, a preferred option and then I would project, manage and be involved in the concept design. But once that concept design gate is reached and we move into detailed design, that project actually gets passed on to the project delivery team who are highly specialised in the delivery and construction, commissioning of bulk infrastructure including tendering, managing contractors, subcontractors, consultants, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I’ve been working across in that early design phase. A whole range of different infrastructure projects, which is so exciting as well as strategic projects. So that’s looking at the areas that we service at the moment, where our growth is going to be, what infrastructure we need to expand or extend and how to meet that growth. 

So, I follow that whole strategic planning journey from start to finish, but not through to the end of actually commissioning the asset constructed in the ground.

Devika Mudaliar: Yeah, that was great. Melanie?

Melanie Slimming: Sure. One of the I was going to talk about is my challenges, but I can talk about it a bit now.

Devika Mudaliar: Yeah.

Melanie Slimming: When I started at Forbes and it was a challenge because remember, my background’s more process engineering. My first project when I started at Forbes was to design and construct a sewer network, including Pump station for a new 300 lot subdivision. 

So, kind of thrown in the deep end cause, I’ve never done anything with pipes before, but yeah, we got a consultant in to assist, but mostly we designed a pipe network and pump station to service. Yeah, the 300-Watt subdivision and that was pretty cool. So, we designed it in very quick time and then we put it in, and it was the biggest project that water did. All the construction was done in house. So, it was the biggest construction project that the team had ever done before. We had a couple of issues with the pump station but at the end yeah it all got installed and they’re using it now.

Last time I was back, Forbes probably have 20 or 30 houses that are already connected up to it and using it. So yeah, it’s pretty cool too. I mean, even though sewer was buried under the ground, it’s pretty cool to drive around there and think, yeah, that happened because I designed it, and I made that happen.

Devika Mudaliar: So would you like to add some further challenges that you faced during your career and how did you overcome them?

Melanie Slimming: Yeah. Well, I guess with that project, it was a bit scary because in that case I’d just moved to NSW so I didn’t have many contacts at that point in New South Wales that could really assist. So definitely had to lean on team members and external consultants and then the job as well. So, our joint organisation, so in that case, you know, we sort of had Parkes and Bathurst and Orange around us that were able to offer support.

Interestingly, in my career, I think that the biggest challenge I face is non-technical things. So, it’s personnel and culture of teams. I’ve found that if you have a good culture within your workplace, everything is so much easier and everything runs so much smoother and most of the time the technical stuff will sort of sort itself out. So, for me as a director now, my biggest focus is always that technical. Sorry is always that cultural stuff. So, it’s making the office a fun place to be. 

It’s ensuring that we recognise good performance, it’s ensuring we call out inappropriate behaviours. It’s ensuring that we treat everyone fairly and yeah, just building that culture so that people actually want to come to work and want to have fun. And I suppose it’s not something that’s often talked about. You know, you talk about projects really challenging or this is really hard. We often joke in the office that we like coming to work, you know, it’s a bit of a novelty to say that, but we actually like coming to work. And for me, that’s the most important thing. If you like, who you work with you feel empowered and enjoy. You know you feel fulfilled, I guess in what you’re doing.

Everything else just kind of fades away and it sorts itself out. So for me, culture at the workplace is the biggest challenge, and sometimes your people who don’t want to come around to that, to that culture that’s in my experience been the biggest challenge and that’s honestly that’s what keeps me up at night rather than the technical challenges and difficulties.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you. That’s great. And how about you, Rachel? What’s your biggest challenges you’ve faced in your career and how did you overcome them?

Rachael Abberton: So a little bit similar to Mel actually. So, I’m challenged every day in my role. I’ve been in the water industry now for I think this might be my 9th year or tenth year, every day I’m challenged technically and that’s a challenge. But that’s also why I really like my job. So, its taught me the skills for how to learn to how to find information, how to problem solve.

So, when I’m given a challenge, technically I’ve got networks in council in the broader NSW and Australian water industry that I would reach out to and look in their codes of standards.

I would research online, even sometimes I look at YouTube videos to help me. There are so many resources out there to help me technically, and the one thing I love about the water industry is that no one will ever know every everything. So even the most experienced water engineer will be learning technically.

To their last day in the industry, I’ve moved into a leadership role over the last year and a half and by far some of the biggest challenges have been from a leadership perspective. One thing I’ve really leveraged to help me develop in that space. I have done formal leadership training, but I have some real wonderful mentors within the organisation and also external and they have been a wonderful source of support and helping me making decisions for setting the culture, setting the expectations. 

Also, creating A-Team environment where people in the organisation trust us, we uphold the reputation for being respectful, kind, approachable, reliable.
Also, making my team members want to come to work, enjoy the work, because at the end of the day, we’re all engineers. We’ve chosen this career because we love to learn, and so I just want to facilitate an environment where I get the best out of my people.

Devika Mudaliar: Seems like you’ve informed everyone what’s been rewarding for your work. So, we’ll move on to the next one. What skills do you think would be essential for someone pursuing a career in engineering?

Rachael Abberton: Yeah, yeah, I’ll go first. So, I suppose there’s, two ways to look at this. So, if you’re in high school and thinking about whether you might want to go into engineering or science or anything, stem if you have an interest in science and maths. If you have a keenness to learn. If you have an interest in problem solving, looking at how things work and why. If you find yourself questioning.
Any of that, then you have the brain and the interest to potentially pursue a career in engineering. It is a pretty demanding degree. You know, it’s heavily maths and science based, but I do believe that if you have the interest.

And the skills to put your head down and study that then I would recommend more than anything. Think one thing that’s important to remember when you think about going to uni or not is you think about a degree being four years, which is a long commitment, but typically you do you do 2 semesters, 213-week semesters, so you commit to uni for 26 weeks of a 52 week year. 

There is a lot of time when where you aren’t head down in a book trying to study and learn the fundamental. I think that’s really important to remember when making that decision, particularly coming out of year 12.

If you ask someone who is in engineering already studying a degree and looking at what skills you need transitioning into the workforce, I think if you’re already succeeding in an engineering degree, then you have the ability to learn to up skill. Technically, I would focus on those softer skills, the two things for me that are fundamental to an engineer is the ability to communicate not only to be able to speak, but to be able to receive information and communicate verbally and written.
And also, be able to work as a team. Teamwork is part of most engineering roles, if not all to some capacity and it is really fundamental to working in the industry in the engineering industry.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you, Rachel. 

Melanie Slimming: I agree so much with what you just said, right? She pretty much took all of my points. Look, probably the only other thing that I would add is if you want to be a good engineer and if you are practically driven and you can understand the difference between the best option theoretically and the best option practically, that’ll make you a really good engineer. 

So yeah, it’s but everything that Rachel just said is so true. Communication is a big part of the job, yeah.

Devika Mudaliar: So how do you stay updated with the latest developments and you know, technology is changing every day. So how do you keep updated in your field, Melanie?

Melanie Slimming: I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got a couple of staff members under me who love new technology and love new things, so they’re often coming to me being like Mel, look at this new AI device that we can get. Can we get this look at this new drone? Can we get this? 

So, I’m pretty lucky. I definitely leverage off staff that are coming to me, but I suppose the other obvious ones are conferences and reading materials, so probably if you’re in a Council, you will get a lot of those industry magazines that come and land on your desk.

Have a flick through them. There’s always interesting stuff in there. I generally meet with suppliers as well, so suppliers can be frustrating if they’re just coming to sell you stuff. But definitely the first time they come through, I’m always keen to get a brochure, listen to what they have to say. Often the suppliers that you’ve worked with for years might be like, hey, I know you guys always buy this, but how about you do this? 

So for example, we have a supplier that we use that sell concrete manholes.
And they said to us one day, look, we’re happy to continue supplying the concrete manholes, but a lot of people are going plastic now, how would you like to try that? 

And, you know, we’ve just put our first plastic manhole in the other day, and it was great. And the guys all said, oh, this is way easier. It’s lighter, it’s better WHS. So, you know, it didn’t cost that much different, but the supplier is sort of trying to sell that. So that’s a way. And yeah, just utilising things like LinkedIn as well. And, you know, just monitoring what’s going on out there.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you, Mel. Rachel?

Rachael Abberton: Yep, so I totally agree with everything Mel just said and the only one that I can think to build on that for me is I’m involved in a few industry groups. I suppose you would call them. So, one is the Water Services Association of Australia. They have some wonderful groups in different themes. I suppose I’m on one for purified recycled water and that’s a fantastic resource. So, I listen to webinars and look at resources from all over the world, particularly coming out of the United States, who were quite advanced with the purify recycled water. Schemes which Australia is, I suppose, moving into looking at that technology. 

Yeah, apart from that, if I was at university, there’s opportunities to join different civil engineering societies, I suppose. And then in those societies they have, you know, networking professional development opportunities and within those you know you can look at be exposed to, I suppose advances in technology and innovations and that sort of thing.

Melanie Slimming: Definitely.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you. I’m just wary of the time, so I’m just going to sort of summarise this next question. So, if you can sort of provide any advice for aspiring engineers and share some of your personal insights as to what should aspiring engineers need to consider before they join the workforce as an engineer? Any personal insights on how to balance work and personal life and while working on demanding projects?

Rachael Abberton: Kind of circling back to what I’ve already said is. I know that I am going to no matter what the challenge is, no matter what I know or what I don’t know that because I have that interest and love for learning.

And problem solving that I’m going to be able to tackle any of the challenges that I get given and I’ve had to tell myself that sometimes when I felt a bit overwhelmed or quite out of my depth.

Because I know how to find the resources and support to help me succeed. So, if you’re a bit nervous about that but really interested in engineering but find the idea of working as an engineer daunting, you’re not doing it alone. You’re always part of a team. This is why I was talking about communication and teamwork because that is what’s going to make you succeed.

And the last question, how I balance work and personal life while working on demeaning projects. One of the absolute wonderful things about working for Council is there is a flexible working policy and a work life balance. Policy and those expectations are set so that allows me.

To spend my day at work for the part of my day that I am at working on these wonderful projects that impact my community. But my day isn’t only about my work, you know I do fun things before work. I’m at the beach doing Pilates and after work, you know, I really fit in my hobbies and interests and my family and friends around my work life.
And that is a really wonderful benefit of working for Council.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you, Rachel. That’s great.

Melanie Slimming: Yeah, I really echo Rachel’s comments about working for council. It’s a great place to be. We get so much fun stuff happening at work, so many really meaningful projects that impact the community in a positive way. And then on the flip side, you know, the culture is really encouraged that it’s a nine to five job and then you can go and enjoy yourself outside of hours. It’s generally flexible as well so I would endorse and encourage a career in local government.

For me, my advice to people who are thinking about studying engineering or in the middle of engineering, just go for it and don’t limit yourself. Believe in yourself. You know if you’ve started it, you’ve obviously, like Rachel said, you’ve obviously got an interest. Work isn’t going to be exactly like uni, but if you’re interested and enjoying it, I’m sure that you’re going to end up with having a good, a good career. 

Work on your soft skills, your communications, your organisation as well, and the way that you write reports and communicate technical information to non-technical people is a big one and then I guess if you’re in the workforce and you’re not quite sure about things, speak up. 

Engineers can be great, but we’re also not always the best at picking up subtle, you know, signs from other people. So, if you’re struggling, we’re not always going to notice, even if we care, we’re not always going to notice just on many things. So, you need to just tell us. Speak up. Let us know. There are always ways to change things. Adjust the workload. And Rachel’s right. Like just carve out time for yourself, you know, going for runs and exercising is the best way to destress.

Devika Mudaliar: That was great. Melanie and Rachel. So now we’re going to go to the Q&A panel just to see if there are any questions from the registrants. So, we have one question here. Does NSW Councils consider candidates with international engineering experience or do most roles require Australian work experience?

Melanie Slimming: I’ll jump in and say, yeah, we absolutely look at all candidates when you apply. Probably the one thing I would say for our Council that’s more important than your previous experience is telling us why you want to move regionally. 

So, for me, I work in a small regional community. I will receive applications from people, and they’ll think that our Council is near Sydney, we are a 5-hour drive from Sydney so you couldn’t live in Sydney and work for us. That wouldn’t work. 

So, for us it’s more important you tell us why you’re happy to move to Narromine. 

Why you’re interested in moving out here and then providing, you know the context of your previous experience and how it would apply to the job. But you know, if you are applying for a roads engineer position and you are a roads engineer somewhere overseas, great, we’d love to have you, my roads engineer, currently came from New Zealand. He moved over to Narromine from New Zealand, and he had a solid reason for moving as well. So that would be more important than your location of your previous job experience.

Devika Mudaliar: Great. Would you like to add something for that, Rachel?

Rachael Abberton: No, not at all. Oh, sorry. I do agree with everything Mel said. The only thing I think that would be of advantage if you did apply, although you had worked in NSW starting to become familiar with the NSW Standards for Water and Sewage Design and management. If you showed that initiative with your application that would support.

You know everything else that Mel was saying about moving regionally.
Because where I am where, about four hours north of Sydney as well. So yeah, we have we have got that regional context to where we live.

Devika Mudaliar: Great. Our next question is does Council offer you a mentor when starting out?

Melanie Slimming: I mean it would depend what Council you’re starting at, and it would probably depend on what job that you’re going into, but definitely if you were going into a junior or grad engineer role, 100% yeah, we’d give you one.

Rachael Abberton: Yep, certainly.

Devika Mudaliar: Right. So, we don’t have any more questions and if there are questions after the webinar, feel free to reach out to us on Careers at Council. So, any final words for our participants in this webinar. So, we’ll start with Melanie.

Melanie Slimming: No, I’ve really enjoyed coming on today. I hope I’ve imparted a little bit of words of wisdom, but yeah, the water industry and Council in general is a great place to work. I would really encourage you if you’re if you’re looking for a job in local council to look out on the job boards and see what’s there. Sometimes I think we get a bit of a bad rap in the in the public perception, but it’s really a great place to work and there are great people with. Yeah, really great knowledge and skills so I’m very grateful and lucky to be where I am.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you. Rachel?

Rachael Abberton: Thank you so much, everybody for listening. I think my parting words would be one thing that I didn’t realise as clear as it is now, when I was going through uni that you can be an engineer and have a really fantastic, really rewarding, really challenging engineering career and not have to live in a city particularly with water and sewer. You don’t typically see our infrastructure cause, it’s all underground.

But we can work across all different types of locations. You can be in the city, you can be regional, you can be out west, and you can be by the coast. So, you can have just as rewarding a career living in areas that are regional or remote. Mel and I, we could work on the moon with our skills. You know you need water and sewer management.

Everywhere, it is fundamental to human life. It is the fundamental thing. So, the water industry will give you skills and experience where you can move overseas. 

That question earlier about seeking people working from overseas into our area most certainly and vice versa. There are so many opportunities, the water industry is big, but it’s also very small and the opportunities to travel to live where you like is fantastic and the opportunities that come with it.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you so much. So we’ve sort of reached our time limit and on behalf of Careers at Council, I would like to thank Melanie Slimming and Rachel Abberton for participating as guest speakers in our first webinar focusing on the engineering job roles, especially in the water industry, and we look forward to your feedback.

We will certainly provide some of your questions to Melanie and Rachel. And if they can respond to your questions, we will send it out via our newsletter and make it available on the platform. 

So, thank you for joining everyone and join in Careers at Council, via LinkedIn, Facebook to receive jobs alerts at Careers at Council. Thank you.

Melanie Slimming: Thanks guys.

Rachael Abberton: Thanks everyone.

Devika Mudaliar: Thank you.