The 1st Christchurch regional YGP one day symposium was held on 21 June 2019. It was an absolute success with overwhelmingly positive feedback. The event was made possible by the sponsorship of Geotechnics, WSP-Opus and NZGS. In total, 20 people were in attendance from 11 different consultancies. One of the attendees even drove down from Nelson to attend the event. Our two mentors, Don Macfarlane (AECOM) and Mark Easton (WSP-Opus), added immense value to the event by providing technical guidance, generating discussion amongst attendees as well as inspiring YGP’s to follow best practice.
Three prizes were awarded at the end of the symposium. The choice was extremely difficult because all the presentations were of such high standard. The Mentors Choice for the best presentation of the day was awarded to David Rowland (Beca) for his presentation titled: “Empathy in Design”. This award included sponsorship for David to present at the 21st NZGS National Symposium in Dunedin in 2020. Two other awards presented were: the People’s Choice awarded to Rebecca McMahan (Beca) for her presentation titled: “Mastering Part-Time Study” and the Honourable Mention prize, which was awarded to Tom Revell (Aurecon) for his presentation titled: “Design of a hybrid rockfall protection structure south of Kaikoura”.
Unfortunately, we had too much fun and forgot to take a group photo at the symposium venue.
Reported by
Romy Ridl on behalf of the Christchurch YGP symposium organising committee:
Romy Ridl (University of Canterbury),
Lauren Foote (ENGEO) and
Helen Hendrickson (WSP-Opus)