When I started my career as an electrical engineer, the traditional career trajectory was somewhat fixed. In recent years, though, I have observed changes in our industry that have created new roles and ways of working, while developing a more diverse and inclusive environment.

In the early part of my career, I worked mainly on industrial and mining sites — wearing high visibility clothing — designing and commissioning electrical and control systems for mining clients. Later in my career, I discovered new roles in the engineering industry; I managed projects, built teams, and innovated and collaborated with colleagues all over the world to solve engineering problems. Today, I rarely need my steel cap boots; I prefer to wear my favourite fashion flats.

In my current role, as ArchTam’s chief digital innovation officer in the Asia Pacific region, I’m working with our teams to transform our core engineering design services and to create new digital experiences for our clients, and better outcomes for the communities we serve. The new data platforms we utilize allow us to work anywhere and at any time. This flexibility in the way we work is a welcome change in the industry.

When I first joined ArchTam, a very wise engineer with more than 40 years of experience said something that has stuck with me: “As an organization, we have to accept that each new hire changes ArchTam in some way, and that’s something we welcome and celebrate.” This comment demonstrated to me that we have permission to be our authentic selves, to challenge the status quo and to put forward our ideas for the future.

Working with our teams to progress ArchTam’s digital transformation has provided me opportunities to develop, grow and also, in some small way, present a different view of a career trajectory for young women to pursue — or at least think about.

I always like to participate in International Women’s Day campaigns because I remember attending my first International Women’s Day event almost 15 years ago and hearing from the women leaders on the stage about their careers and the importance of networking. Before that first event, I had never considered the importance of networking and I had no knowledge of how to go about it. I am grateful for their insights.

Programs like our Advocate Sponsorship Program, which matches high-performing female leaders with members of our leadership Team, and our broader mCircles mentoring program, are helping cultivate leadership skills for the next generation of women leaders. I really enjoy mentoring and sponsoring women engineers at all levels by helping them to grow their confidence and work toward their goals.

My career path is an example of what’s possible and the different types of roles that women can aspire to — many of which might not even exist yet. For those interested in technology and in creating the solutions to some of the world’s most complex challenges, such as our global response to climate change, engineering could be a career for you — steel caps are optional.

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We asked our women employee network: What’s the best career decision you’ve ever made? From associate vice presidents to senior engineer consultants, here’s what they had to share.

 Ready for your next big career move? Browse our Careers site and sign up for our Talent Network to stay in the loop on new opportunities.

Amy Canfield – Associate Vice President, Transportation

I attribute a lot of my success to identifying mentors early on in my career. I’ve proactively sought out relationships with people in positions I aspire to and I’ve been fortunate to have several people take me under their wing. The advice, cautionary tales and relationships they helped me foster have shaped my career goals. I’ve surrounded myself with allies who truly care about me and support my ambitions — both professional and personal. I don’t work in fear and because of that, I’m happy, I take chances and I’m not afraid to dream big.

Dana Al-Qadi – Senior Engineering Consultant

The best career decision I ever made was realizing that careers are hardly ever built on a single decision. Careers are the culmination of all the times we decide to say “yes” — a tiny word that can lead to immense change. I have benefited from saying yes to working in new disciplines, investing in my own technical growth in emerging areas, prioritizing learning from our many experts and committing my time to mentorship and team growth. Even when opportunities do not immediately seem like they fit in the larger goals of your pre-planned career, they can still be incredibly valuable.

Maria Ivanova – Architect
The best career decision I’ve ever made was to join the graduate development program in Continental Europe. It introduced me to new people in various roles who had different expertise. I’ve learned that expanding my network is one of the most powerful development tools. Collaborating with and learning from others has helped me become more confident, both personally and professionally — I was able to settle in to a new role in Kazakhstan with ease. I am now a big advocate for the graduate development program and lead initiatives to bring more talent to the Eastern Europe region.

Amineh Ahmad – Senior Engineer, Project Controls

My career path with ArchTam started in 2015 as a graduate project controls engineer, where I supported design projects and had the opportunity to work with an amazing project manager who later became my mentor. The best career decision I’ve ever made was during my second year — I had a choice to continue on my current path or join the civil infrastructure end market. The idea of changing end markets was terrifying because it involved a transition from residential and healthcare to ports and bridges. I also had to consider the established relationship with my mentor. Ultimately, I decided to make the shift because of the new challenges that my new work profile and projects would bring. Making this change helped me gain confidence and increased my sense of accomplishment at work.

Bryony Martin – Regional Director and B+P UK&I Aviation Market Sector Leader

The best career decision I ever made was to get a mentor. My first mentor was a director working at ArchTam, but on a completely different team. Having someone to bounce ideas off of was hugely valuable; I was lucky that my mentor had faced many of the challenges that I was facing, was very successful in her career and was formidable in her approach to work. She challenged me to think differently about work and life! She has been one of the most influential and inspiring people in my career. Ever since building our relationship, I have been a huge advocate for the mentoring process, and I have learned to accept constructive feedback and use it to improve my skills and reflect on the impact I make.

Elke Watts – Operations Manager

The best career decision I’ve made has been to say “yes” to things outside my comfort zone. I joined ArchTam as an environmental scientist in 2014. After a few years managing projects and delivering technical work, I wanted to explore doing entirely different things. When opportunities to work on new projects within the business became available, I took the chance to branch out. The unknown can be perceived as risky, but by saying yes and opening myself up to new tasks, I secured an amazing job working with a team that I love. The ANZ Operational Services team has allowed me to work with a diverse group of people and on challenging projects — ultimately making me a very happy employee! Change is constant. Don’t be afraid of it. You don’t want to be the person whose heels are in the mud when the wagon starts pulling you in different directions.

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We opened our doors to 60 international conference delegates, including a wide range of landscape architects, students, policy makers, clients, and those from other disciplines and allied areas of practice. We also welcomed a glass box full of bees! Morning tea consisted of fresh and organic locally-sourced food, fresh bread and – thanks to local collective ‘Bee One Third’ – honey from hives placed on a rooftop across the street from our office.

We are passionate about urban food and particularly the compelling co-benefits not only for food security, but also for health and well-being, community participation and future economic diversity.

The title of the event was chosen carefully. The infrastructure reference captures the value of understanding a bigger picture and connected systems. ‘Small bites’ represent the many small-scale changes and evolutionary steps already being taken all over the place – to make clear the collaborative nature of urban food. ‘Big places’ remind us of the potential, and of the transformative potential of big picture thinking. We were interested in scale and particularly the scale-ability of collaborative urban food production.

The first thing that struck us as we prepared for the event was the huge value in drawing together different ArchTam activity related to food. For the first time we assembled a passionate international group of people working around the edges of these themes to foster a dialogue, understand synergies and imagine potential. This process yielded the framework for the first half of the session.

We set the scene with some big picture headlines. These all provide compelling motivation to address some very real and pressing challenges.

We then gave a concise overview of a number of ArchTam projects, conference papers, activities and emerging initiatives. These included an understanding of the significant value (economically and socially) of small-scale urban food production, the emerging policy context through Gold Coast Local Food Feasibility and Redlands Rural Futures strategies and physical input into urban food production in Brooklyn, New York and Christchurch, New Zealand. To bring this back to a local context, Brisbane City Council provided a snapshot of community gardens within the city.

We explored concepts of the near-future, such as the Urban Food Jungle, the integrated potential flowing from a strategic infrastructure approach to climate adaptation (Townsville example) and the power of statistics relating to land area, productive potential, water consumption and employment creation (Jeddah Plan Food Strategy). We demonstrated the simple steps required to turn existing places into productive urban places.

The second session began with morning tea and was an informal and energetic honey-fuelled discussion about ideas, innovations, priorities and opinions related to ‘what next’? We captured the different views and have committed to producing a paper to explore the role of the profession in defining a step change in urban food production, in what will be a tangible step towards creating a transformative moment.

The collaboration has yielded great potential. We now need to hold ourselves to account for taking the next steps. The carrot? That has to be the truly compelling and tangible benefits to be harvested from big picture edible infrastructure within our towns and cities.

My simple conclusion from this is that urban food production just requires intentional steps, but these need to influence the process at different stages, through a determined approach. Most of our cities adopt a strategic, finely-tuned and well-funded approach to transport infrastructure. We largely take for granted the benefits and value of good transportation. Our provocative question for our audience: using the example of transport, why don’t we create a ministry of urban food infrastructure as the next step towards harvesting the benefits of local food production?

Alastair Leighton (alastair.leighton@archtam.com) is an associate director with ArchTam’s Design + Planning practice in Queensland.

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Last weekend I met Australian Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Liesel Jones.

I didn’t know who she was.

We chatted about day spas, massages and fake tans! Liesel has a dream: to open the best urban day spa in Australia, and I for one know she’ll make her dream come true.

A recent article in The Urban Developer took a look at the rise in cycling and the growing demand for end-of-trip facilities – things like showers, lockers and cycle parking racks. The opinion piece noted that whilst the car is still the dominant mode of travel in Australia – and many cities around the world – the rise in travel by bicycle and scooter – and up-surge in joggers and runners – is creating both demand for new or retrofitted office premises that provide facilities, and instances where  some city landlords are charging a monthly fee in excess of $50 for bike storage and locker use.

At around the same time, my yoga buddy, Julie, a primary school teacher who knows nothing about urban planning, asked the bleeding obvious question: “why don’t gyms and hotel spas let city cyclists use their showers?”

As you can imagine, all of this got me thinking: will day spas increase cycling in our cities?

Yes, I think they will.

Take my Facebook friend Mitch Bright. He runs the Brisbane Airport Bicycle User Group. They’re campaigning for showers and lockers at the domestic terminal. He says it’s fine for overall-wearing ground staff to be sans shower but we apparently expect  pilots to be highly poised and very polished! I don’t know much about airports but I do know – from long stop-overs and a few accidentally missed flights – that most airports have lots of showers. They’re in the business lounges, in the new pay-as-you-go shower facilities, the in-terminal hotels, the food courts, the dangerous goods areas (not that I loiter there!) and next to the swimming pool, if you’re in Singapore.

Today on my 11-minute walk to work I loosely counted the number of possible showers. Two day spas; two hairdressers; a bike shop; one medical centre; two yoga studios; a backpackers hostel; and a servo (fuel station) with a shower in the disabled facilities. In total, I counted at least ten showers that have the potential – with a little imaginative entrepreneurial thinking – to be utilised by cyclists once or twice a week.

I know we can’t just let anyone use any shower anywhere, but we can identify opportunities to adjust how we use our existing assets. Showers and lockers cost money, and their merits are often called into question. If we really want cycling to be a central part of our cities we need to work together so that we all “sweat our assets.” The story of this success lies in our ability to identify the obvious opportunities, to understand which assets are underused, and to create partnerships which provide advantages for all.

I reckon that outliers like Liesel, with big ambitions and heaps of determination, have the sense to realise that if we work together we can make everyone’s dreams come true.

Rachel Smith (rachel.smith@archtam.com) is an internationally-recognized urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with ArchTam’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter, or follow her blog here.

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