Newcastle’s Young Engineer of the Year named

GHD’s engineer Andrew Bagnall has been named the Engineers Australia Young Engineer of the Year (Newcastle) at a function held on 10 September at Newcastle City Hall. The award acknowledges exceptional young engineers who have reached a high level of achievement and involvement in engineering and the community.

“It’s a real honour to receive this award,” said Andrew. “This recognition validates the importance that my key areas of interest - ecologically sustainable design (ESD) and building information modelling (BIM) - are going to play a significant role in engineering and the wider community into the future."

Andrew has been instrumental in developing the ESD practice at GHD into a sustainable business unit. ESD is now a core component of GHD’s built environment offering.

“There exists a great opportunity for organisations to reduce the 23%* of greenhouse gases that commercial buildings contribute collectively to the environment in Australia alone, while in turn benefiting from these more efficiently operated buildings,” he added.

Andrew has played a key role in the introduction of BIM into GHD’s Property and Buildings business. He said, “BIM allows significant efficiency benefits to organisations by enabling them to virtually design and construct a building long before construction begins on site. It integrates the many components of a project such as architecture, engineering, project management, and building operations and maintenance together onto one model.”

To drive the adoption of ESD and BIM in the wider built environment community, Andrew has presented at architecture and engineering industry groups, universities and international conferences. He was also a mentor for Indigenous students interested in an engineering career at this year’s Engineering Aid Indigenous Summer School.

In May 2010, Andrew was named in the Engineers Australia Most Inspiring Young Engineer list for his work in ESD.