Brittney Monk

I am currently working in the construction engineering team at Burwood North Station on the Sydney Metro West – Central Tunnelling Package. Take a step into my shoes and see what I do every day:

3.30 AM

That dreaded sound of the alarm. Up, dressed, breakfast, hair and teeth brushed, bag packed and out the door by 4.00 am.

4.00 AM 

It's always me and the regular early morning crew at the gym. I’m usually a pretty social person but this early in the morning I tend to just keep to myself and get the workout done.

5.00 AM

And the hour commute begins. I am a huge F1 fan so it's almost always an F1 podcast that gets played on the drive to work. 

6.00 AM

The workday begins! I always like to get to work early so I can get myself prepared for the day. This morning I made sure I had all the SWMS, Work Packs and Permits ready for my work for the day.  

6.45 AM

The rest of the team trickle in and we head to pre-start. We do this every morning, and it is essentially a discussion with everyone on-site to go through what is happening for the day. This way everyone is aware of each other’s works and if there are any issues, they can be discussed altogether.

7.00 AM

This is one of the first days my crew was on site so we spent the first part of the day going through all of the required documentation. While I was organising this, the 60T Crane we had on site for the day was getting set up in position.

Although I’d like to think that everything runs smoothly on site, this is not always the case. This morning I had only 1 of my 2 EWPs turn up on site which meant I had to spend the morning chasing this up.

9.00 AM

I headed back up to the office for a quick snack and to follow up on a few emails. At 9.30 am, I attended the Procurement Meeting where my team sits down with the commercial team to discuss all of the open procurement packages relating to the site work. Some of the ones we discussed included Cavern Waterproofing, Chemicals for the WTP and Conventional Formwork.

10.00 AM

I then headed back out on site for the major lifts for the day to commence installation of the Water Treatment Plant. The Clarifier unit was delivered and then installed in 3 pieces using the crane. There were a number of issues encountered throughout the day which meant the final section was not able to be installed and had to be pushed to the following day.

2.30 PM

After spending most of the day out on site, I headed back to the office for our 2.30 pm meeting. This meeting is with the construction team (engineers and supervisors) to run through the scopes for the next week.

3.00 PM

Finally time for lunch! Myself and the Project Engineer in my team sat in our brand new kitchen and had lunch together. I don’t often get time to sit and have lunch (it's usually at my desk or on the go) so it was nice to have 15 minutes of downtime.

3.30 PM

My team had a debrief on what went well and what needs to be improved after the multiple issues encountered during the day. We came up with a good plan to mitigate some of the issues moving forward which will be implemented tomorrow.

4.30 PM

Finally, back at my desk, I read and responded to the 30-odd emails in my inbox. I also had multiple items still on my to-do list that needed to be completed before the end of the day including:

• Temporary Structures Shift Report
• Site Weekly Report
• Update Site 3 Week Look Ahead
• Input any safety observations from the day into Lucidity System
• Complete the timesheet in LinkedSite
• Raise some purchase requisitions passed on to me by supervisors
• Review and provide comments on Water Treatment Plant Methodology

8.00 PM

A late night tonight after spending very little time at my desk during the day. I locked up the offices and headed out to my car for the drive home.

9.00 PM

Finally home and time for a shower, dinner, a quick scroll through Instagram and then straight to bed, ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Thinking of experiencing life as an ACCIONA Australia Graduate? Sign up to GradAustralia to receive job alerts for ACCIONA Australia.