Join the Diversity in Tunnelling Sub Group for our National event “Inclusion, everybody matters’.  An enlightening event where members of our community with differing abilities share their personal experiences and perspectives from working within the Australian civil engineering industry.

This hybrid gathering will explore the transformative power of engagement and inclusion, with a focus on how diverse talents can drive positive change in our profession and society and how we can all support each other more inclusively. The session will delve into the challenges and triumphs faced by our speakers, and discover practical strategies for fostering an inclusive environment. As we celebrate resilience and diverse voices, we are also excited to potentially welcome a guest speaker. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a diverse community and learn how we can all make a difference in the engineering industry and beyond.

Learning outcomes

In this presentation you will learn:

• About inclusion and diversity in our industry.
• Celebration of diversity and areas where inclusion can be improved including: Personal experiences of engineers with disabilities.
• Importance of an inclusive environment for innovation and resilience.
• Positive impacts of diversity in the industry.
• Strategies for overcoming barriers to inclusion.

Event program

In-person: 

• 5:30pm AEST: Registration open
• 6:00pm AEST: Presentation commences and Q&A session
• 7:00pm AEST: Presentation concludes and further networking
• 7:30pmAEST: Event concludes

Online: 

• 6:00pm AEST: Presentation commences and Q&A session
• 7:00pm AEST: Presentation concludes

About the speakers

Janice Lovelock MIEAust CPEng

Senior Engineer at AECOM

Janice is a Senior Engineer at AECOM. She is passionate about the engineering profession and privileged to have been involved in many major roads and rail projects in NSW. She enables clients to manage their risk through expertise knowledge and skills, and works to manage multidisciplinary projects in an efficient and profitable manner. Janice enjoys coordinating project teams, finding solutions for complex technical problems and thrives on using my experience to inspire young people into what she has found to be a very rewarding career. Janice has a keen interest in engineering from a technical perspective, but an even keener interest in the social benefits engineers can bring to our communities – very much driven by my new perspective as a wheelchair user after sustaining a permanent spinal cord injury in 2019. Being an engineer, a mother, and a wheelchair user, Janice finds these separate aspects of herself make for an individual and unique experience of the world. She believes we have an obligation to consider the experience of diverse members of our community to create better outcomes for all.

Craig Wright

Civil & Industrial Sales at BarChip Australia Pty, Ltd

Craig is a seasoned professional currently serving as the Civil Manager for sales and business development at Barchip Aust, overseeing operations in Australia and the Pacific Region for over 16 years. During this time, he successfully introduced the company to the tunnelling community, establishing partnerships and supplying materials for various domestic tunnel projects. In addition to his impressive career, Craig is actively involved in promoting diversity and inclusion as a member of the Diversity in Tunnelling subcommittee, and he is holding elected positions on both the Concrete Institute of Australia’s Queensland committee since 2017 and the Queensland chapter of the Australian Tunnelling Society since 2022. Despite facing the challenges of Retinitis Pigmentosa, which led to visual impairment, Craig is determined, resilient, and dedicated to making a positive impact in his field and encouraging acceptance among his peers.

Dr. Jason Le Masurier

Civil Engineer

Jason is a chartered Civil Engineer who assists businesses and organisations increase their resilience using his TIC TOC CLOC process to manage uncertainty, maximize opportunity and minimize risk in this uncertain world. He began his geotechnical career with Hyder Consulting in 1990 and early on gained experience in the design of tunnels. In 1997 he embarked on his PhD at the University of Bristol collaborating with 12 industrial partners to develop process models to support the Observational Method in geotechnical engineering, including a yearlong Technology Transfer Secondment to Arup where he worked as part of a design-build team on a complex deep basement construction in London, employing the Observational Method to make continuous improvements to the design and construction sequence.

In 2007 he suffered a devastating brain injury in a kite surfing accident and spent the next two years in hospital rehabilitation. His son was born in the same hospital that year. He recovered from paralysis and being told he’d never walk again to completing a triathlon 7 years after the accident. He will talk about the mindset of seeing a crisis as an opportunity / catalyst- based on the concept of post-traumatic growth (TIC). He links this with his PhD on the Observational Method allowing the uncertainty created by a crisis to be managed – taking opportunities consciously (TOC) , to avoid the default outcome of becoming the victim of a crisis by using contingencies to let opportunities commence (CLOC).