Glen Mitchell, a man with a passion for engineering
When I enrolled at University of Canterbury, they looked at my marks and told me I was unlikely to pass engineering and should consider a different career pathway. I was like “are you kidding me!?”
It was a daunting first day but it didn’t stop me. I’d been brought up with the attitude “you can achieve anything you put your mind to”. I’d spent so much time in the workshop, on the farm pulling things apart and putting them back together. I knew I was wired for it. I also had a reason. I wanted to design America’s Cup boats. It wasn’t an easy first year, but after that I was away”.
I secured a job designing water infrastructure in Dunedin because my girlfriend was studying there. Not America's Cup boats but you could say I was still following my heart, just in a different way! We’re married now and have two great kids.
We’ve had some amazing experiences with my job. I’ve worked as a consultant engineer in Laos. It was a cool project for Asian Development Bank. We designed and built water treatment plants for impoverished, rural towns to provide clean drinking water. It was so rewarding, not just helping the town but also growing the technical capacity of the people we worked with. Before we’d go on site it would have to be cleared for landmines left from the Laotian Civil & Vietnam Wars. You don’t think about things like that coming from New Zealand.
I enjoyed being a consultant but after some opportunities to work on the construction side I realised that is what I really wanted to do. So I’m now a Services Engineer. I manage the output of all the services contractors on a construction site. Basically anything in the building that isn’t concrete or steel. What I love about my job is the people. The people I work with are the salt of the earth and the type of people I grew up with. We’re all there to do a professional job but we have a laugh and enjoy what we do. When you’re consulting you do design after design and often never see them built. Now I see things come together and I can go “Cool. That's something I was part of”.
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