Architect – Queensland

Kristen MacAskill wants to change the face of civil engineering.

The 26-year-old hopes to breathe new life into her traditional profession by designing and creating modern cities for the future.

“Civil engineering is usually about pipes and roads and base infrastructure in transport and water,” MacAskill says.

“But I think it also plays a role in shaping our cities.

“I’d like to develop our cities in ways that make them a better place to live.

“I’m trying to get a broad base of experience, to learn about infrastructure in general so I can understand how to influence it.”

To this end, MacAskill has applied to Cambridge University to study a Masters of Philosophy in Engineering for Sustainable Development.

“Spending a year at Cambridge is really going to help me specialise,” she says.

“And while people think sustainable development is all about protecting the environment, it actually goes back to defining what projects we need to have in the first place.

“If we want to improve our public transport system, for instance, we need to look at land use first and then ask what else needs to be in place.

“Rather than being an engineer on projects, I’d like to be an engineer talking at policy level and advising governments.

“I’d like to have the understanding of an engineer with some knowledge of politics to make it all happen.”

If her ambition and early career experience are any indication, MacAskill’s future looks bright.

Born and bred in New Zealand, she did an undergraduate degree at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and then went on to do a Masters in Engineering Management.

She did her masters project at global engineering firm MWH in Christchurch and then transferred to the company’s Brisbane’s office in 2007 as its transport division was beginning to grow.

She was sponsored by Consult Australia to attend an International Federation of Consulting Engineers’ conference in London last year, which featured some of the world’s top engineering minds.

She also attended the 2009 Australian Women’s Leadership Symposium in Brisbane last year in her capacity as MWH Australia Young Achiever of the Year.

And her first projects as an employed engineer included the Gold Coast Rapid Transit network and the multimillion-dollar Murrumba Downs waste water treatment plant.

“Over the past year or two, the focus of my work has been working with government departments and looking at roads 20 years ahead and planning for what we’ll need,” she says.

It’s pretty good going for a girl who, in Year 12, didn’t know what she wanted to do for a job.

“I was quite strong in maths and physics but I also liked art,” MacAskill says.

“My careers adviser said I should do engineering and architecture in my first year at university because it would leave my options open.”

In the end, however, civil engineering won, but it isn’t the profession’s core skills that won her over.

“I started out thinking I could do the maths and the physics but I don’t do any of that in my job now,” she says.

“There’s a lot of communication – we’re always looking for something new and we’re working in teams and with people from different disciplines.

“I think that’s what appeals to me most – getting a common understanding between people.

“It’s working with people and coming up with solutions.”

MacAskill couldn’t have picked a better time to enter the profession, according to EL Consult executive search managing director Grant Montgomery.

He says this will be the “decade of the engineer” with recent research by his firm predicting engineers will see the best employment conditions of all executives in 2010 and beyond. “The outlook for the next year, in fact the next five years, is very positive for Australian engineers right across the board including chemical, electrical and construction engineering,” Montgomery says.

Despite the fact that engineering remains a male-dominated profession, MacAskill is confident she’ll achieve her career goals.

“In a way, it’s good to be a minority,” she says.

“The industry recognises it needs more females so, as a young female engineer coming through, you tend to get a lot of support.

“It’s probably very different from those women who went through 10 or 20 years ago.”