• Question: What is the environment your day to day routine like in your workplace?

    Asked by 228trnb45 to Fe, Joe, Olivia, Pete on 17 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Olivia Stodieck

      Olivia Stodieck answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      I usually work from my desk in an “open office” at university – that’s a big room with 20 desks or so. It’s a fairly relaxed environment – we like to be creative and flexible at work. We are all PhD students or Postdocs who do research at the university; there are also frequent coffee and food breaks 🙂
      Although I usually work from 9am-6pm, I don’t really have a routine, because I do different things every day – sometimes I do a lot of reading (at my desk or at the university library) or I code-up my wing simulation models, or I go to meetings/lectures, or I teach undergraduates. I can even work from home if I have an idea in the middle of the night!

    • Photo: Felicity Harer

      Felicity Harer answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      I tend to get in to work around 8 then stay until 4.30/5. Within that, the routine is pretty flexible – meetings here and at other sites, visiting suppliers, food and coffee breaks, reading and writing things up, brainstorming sessions and a fair bit of training as I’m on the graduate scheme here.
      This office is also within a university so the atmosphere is probably pretty similar. We have a lot of wandering over to someone’s desk for a chat or popping out for a coffee and coming back with a project!

    • Photo: Peter Roskilly

      Peter Roskilly answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      The majority of my work is office based. I have my own desk in an open plan office. I sit amongst other civil engineers working on everything from roads to badger/bat surveys.
      As a graduate I started getting tasks to complete within a certain time.
      “Pete – do the analysis for this report by Wednesday, bob’ll show you how”
      As I have become more experienced/useful I get given more Projects to do:
      “Pete – Sort out the pavement survey programme for this year” or “Pete – Please design the Car Park and hard standings for X. Detailed design is due on Y”
      The difference is that when I have a project to do it’s up to me how I go about it with the resources I have available.
      As a consultant my companies only product is expertise. As a consequence we have to be very collaborative. Typically everyone will be keen to help out / give an opinion if you need help. Modern technology has enabled me to collaborate easily with people all over the world using E:Mail/Voice over Internet/PDFs and cloud based storage.

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