Rebekah McAteer graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Canterbury in 2006. For the past 18 months Rebekah has been working in T&T’s Auckland office as a Graduate Geotechnical Engineer in the Geotechnical Group.
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Pictured: Rebekah McAteer, back at her desk in the Auckland office, after being outside "enjoying getting her hands dirty!" |
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Rebekah’s work consists of a wide range of activities involving site investigation, drilling, design, analysis and construction supervision work. “Over the last 18 months I’ve come to understand that you learn far more with hands-on experience and working with senior engineers than you ever do in a lecture theatre! A lot of responsibility is given to Graduates at T&T in terms of management of their own smaller jobs including invoicing, face to face meetings with clients, budgeting and many other management tasks. It’s great to see your own project progress from start to finish and be able to take ownership.”
Rebekah chose geotechnical engineering for a whole range of reasons. The main one was that she didn’t see herself stuck in an office for the rest of her life but didn’t quite fancy being out in the rain all winter either.
“For me, geotechnical engineering is the perfect mix! One day you can be out in the 4WD running around looking at landslides and the next day using sophisticated computer software to analyse what you saw. A lot of the learning at T&T is done ‘on the job’. I have found this to be the best way to learn new skills as it is easier to fully understand something when you have to use it in practice.”
“Geotechnical engineering is a really dynamic and complex job. But the reason why I really like my work?…T&T is a great place to work and I love to go out and get my hands dirty every once in a while!”
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