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Veolia Australia & New Zealand

3.9
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Paolo Jaldon

What I love most about my job is seeing a project I worked on finally work as expected.

What's your job about?

Veolia strives for ecological transformation, and my responsibility as an engineer is to ensure that electrical and instrumentation equipment on-site are functioning and properly maintained to achieve this goal.

My main responsibility as an engineer is to look after electrical and instrumentation equipment on-site, and ensure that the equipment is functional and properly maintained. To give examples of my work, in my first rotation with Water, I worked in a water treatment plant and I was assigned to oversee the replacement of an industrial Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) device, which involved a mix of technical and project management tasks. During the project, I had to identify the cable modifications needed to the UPS, perform cable calculations to determine the necessary cable upgrades, and keep all UPS-related electrical drawings updated. I was also directly involved with the bidding process of the project with contractors and helping answer any questions that contractors had during the installation.
In my current rotation with Waste, I work on maintaining the power station of a bioreactor facility. Currently, there is a project to make upgrades on-site, and on a daily basis my job is to update and review electrical drawings as the project progresses.

For engineers working with industrial equipment, safety is extremely important on the job. To put it simply, an industrial plant needs electricity to be safely distributed around the site. My job is to maintain the cables and electrical equipment that achieves this.

What's your background?

I was born and grew up in Philippines,  and I then moved to UK in 2007 and lived there for 2 years (fun fact: I used to have a British accent!). I then moved to Australia in 2010 and I have been here since then (and slowly lost my British accent).

I can recall when I was first fascinated by engineering. I specifically remember watching a movie called ‘I, Robot’ starring Will Smith, and I was in awe of sci-fi, robots, industrial machines and technology. This was my earliest memory of when my interest in engineering was sparked and it inspired me to consider engineering in university.

In university, club involvement played a major part in my uni life. I was involved in all engineering-related clubs such as robotics and aerospace societies, but ultimately dedicated my time to QUT Motorsport. While there, I worked on designing and building an electrical safety device for the race car, and it also led to me becoming an F1 fan.

In QUT’s job board, I saw an ad for Veolia who were looking to hire for roles in various positions, including an electrical & instrumentation engineer. I did a quick research of the company and I liked Veolia’s mission statement and sustainability-focused projects. I decided to apply and after a few interviews I got the role. I started in November 2021 when Veolia offered to let me start 4 months early as an intern, and I have been in the grad program since then.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

I would say no. In my role, knowing the basics of electromagnetism and power systems is essential to understanding how high voltage and low voltage systems work. Additionally, knowing circuit theory helps greatly with understanding how electric current flows in circuits, which is important for reading and understanding electrical schematics.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

What I love most about my job is seeing a project I worked on finally work as expected. For example, after working 6 months on the design and project management of the UPS project, it was finally installed, and it was incredibly satisfying to see it function as intended.

What are the limitations of your job?

A limitation in my job is that industrial projects are slow to make progress and it takes time to reach the installation stage. This is because safety standards have to be carefully met which goes back to how important safety is on the job.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

  • Get involved in clubs (technical and social) at university, and commit to the ones that you enjoy most. Club involvement is a great way to get project experience at uni and is also a great way to meet people with similar interests.
  • Always aim to finish your assignments early instead of leaving it to the last week/day.
  • Get at least 8 hours of sleep every night!