This International Women’s Day, we celebrate some of ARV’s women who are thriving in areas that have traditionally been considered ‘men’s’ roles.
With 18 months and all the seasons under her belt at ARV Mt Buller, Melanie Von Blanckensee is still relishing the opportunity to combine her love of the outdoors with her engineering career.
“I develop the capital works program for Buller / Stirling every year, and oversee a team of project managers who deliver that program. I also project manage some of the larger projects.”
In essence, Melanie’s role is to ensure that all the capital works projects run on time and to budget, and if they don’t it’s her job to work with her team to decide how to fix the problems or reprioritise the work program.
With her background in structural engineering and consulting, coordinating the challenges presented by building and maintaining infrastructure in an alpine resort seems to be a perfect fit. She’d stepped back from her career to support her neuro-diverse sons and with them now happily at school, she was ready for a tree change.
“I found the job advertised at Buller – I love being in the mountains, I wanted to get back into engineering and project management, and it really suited me. It’s been really great to get back into it and I’ve been loving it.”
Her experience learning about her sons’ needs have added an extra level of expertise to the way Melanie works. “I can see the difference in my ability to deal with stress and a range of different situations – how to deal with people, how to manage my time. And it has made me aware that there are people in the workplace with a whole range of different abilities and needs, and we have to learn how to support and deal with that kind of diversity.”
As a woman in engineering, she has seen how this can impact on women in a predominantly male workplace. “When I first started as an engineer, it was very heavily male dominated. There’s a lot more female engineers and tradies now than there used to be, which is fantastic. I noticed [when working in consulting] that some women in my office didn’t manage site work very well because it can be quite an intimidating situation.”
Melanie, however, was very comfortable working with her male colleagues, thanks partly to the mentorship from a colleague. “One of the people that made a big difference in my career was a site foreman when I was a graduate engineer. He respected women and taught me a lot about being out on site – dealing with contractors, and managing relationships on site.”
“As a result, I find that now I have no hesitation in talking with contractors on site and being able to hold them accountable for the work they do.”
When it comes to ensuring the workplace culture supports everyone, Melanie agrees that it’s important that the wrong behaviour is called out.
“I think it’s important to lead by example. I get the opportunity to bring some of the office-based women out onto site and show them around, introduce them to a different environment. Our broader team also tries to get the outdoor guys inside as well. It helps everyone to understand each other a bit better.”
“When we get to the point that we’re not taking about equality, then I think that’s when we’ll have actually hit equality.”
Page last updated: 08/03/24