In April/May this year, the Arup Brisbane office hosted an Australian first – we ran the first Work Inspiration (WI) program for the Engineering industry. The WI program aims to connect industry directly with schools to develop work experience placements that provide more breadth and depth than ‘traditional’ work experience. The Brisbane office hosted eight Year 11 students from Kelvin Grove State College for six weekly afternoon sessions, during which they undertook activities to explore the different roles in our firm, and how their own strengths and personality traits might fit in with the diverse world of engineering.

Through our partnership with The Smith Family, the Sydney and Melbourne offices are now designing their own WI programs, which will aim to target students who have social or economic disadvantages, to inspire them to reach their full potential once they have finished school. We hope to make this an annual program run in the Brisbane office.

As part of the pilot program, we received funding from the Federal Government to produce a promotional video, which we can use to show to clients, competitors and the community in which we work. We see this program as an opportunity to develop in three key areas, namely community engagement, business development and staff development. We hope in future programs to collaborate with other firms to create an even greater work experience program and to target schools involved in The Smith Family’s Learning for Life program.

A huge thank you to those staff who were involved in the great success of this pilot program – the groundwork has now been done so that future programs will be even more effective for much less effort.