Hi friends, Hope you all are doing well.


So here I am with everything planned and sorted except house which is still on the market and not sure how long will it take for someone to go for it.

Leaving for Sydney early in the New Year 2011 and now gathering thoughts on what could be the potential changes in work life. As lots of you might be from technical background, I am a civil engineer working in the rail/bridges sector, just wondering what differences did you find in your work life from the UK to Australia? Did you find it a bit relaxed or a bit stressed, though I know it would vary between individual.

Please feel free to share your experiences here.

If you work in the public Rail sector in NSW your day will pretty much be:

0900 - Stroll in to work bemoaning train times and too many 'bloody passengers'.
check emails and recount previous nights dalliances.
1000 - Walk around building to see if the Drug and Alcohol testing police are around, if not then back to desk and carry on regaling last nights drinking, if yes then complain of headache and go home.
1100 - Early lunch, its hot and humid so a leisurely walk in the park and pick up a salad and Boost juice. After eating, have a snooze, its a beautiful day and hey, you deserve it, after all you are a public servant.
1330 - Return to your desk, complain about the heat and the impending doom of your evening journey home. Read more of your emails, remembering to forward on the awkward ones to that new asian girl who just started yesterday.
1430 - Do the rounds of your colleagues desks and sort out tonights plans, drinks venue and who you are going to root, if she is lucky!!
1530 - Call it a day, its too hot, you want to miss the peak train traffic and anyway, its been a long day.

fond memories of ships flights then

That sounds just like our site engineers! Except we are only just starting to build the train line, so don't actually use them yet

Hi

Good Luck!

I am also heading to Sydney early January to take up a job as a Building Structures Engineer. It's got to be better than the doom and gloom of the UK construction industry (and no sign of any improvement in the near future)

Always game for a beer with a fellow engineer!

Ah yes, those halcyon days of utter rest in my pit whilst the ships company were struggling with their ropes, pots and pans and dirty blue ovies!!

Construction is possibly the weakest sector in the Aus economy right now.

http://www.news.com.au/money/constru...-1225966944593

The only difference I noticed in my specific experiences (obviously very limited) is it is more limited socially in Australia...far more boozing, socialising during the working week in the UK. Much of the lunchtime boozing in the UK would have been far more frowned upon in Australia.

Maybe because in Australia cities are so spread out (another downside of large houses) so many have to leave to the burbs straight after work with no consideration of returning until the next day. There was also a large contingent of fly-in Monday and out Friday workers in my UK offices who needed entertaining during the week.

Again this is just comparing the workplaces I have worked in, not the whole countries. Maybe I just worked with piss heads in the UK - but it was fun

Same here, I know some of my colleagues in the UK were real p*ssheads, but we would also sometimes just do a couple of drinks after work, people would go home then come back later and we'd go for a meal - we had a real social life outside of work. Here people just pack up and vanish to the suburbs.
Our Christmas party this year has been cancelled due to people saying they don't want to come in from the outer suburbs on their day off. Seeing I was prepared to spend the party stone-cold sober as it was on an afternoon in between two night shifts you'd think a few people would make a bit of an effort on their part, but no, its too difficult and they don't want to socialise with colleagues not even for Christmas.

Mind you, you can guess who I shall be ringing first if we need extra staff over Christmas

I have worked in project offices in the UK and here and find the working atmosphere to be pretty similar. My experience has been that engineering is pretty relaxed and the working environment is friendly. There is a lot of confidence in engineering and construction at the moment and next year is shapng up to be a big one - and the work pace will probably get frenetic!

Your not really an engineer to the locals unless you work in resources. thats my advice.

it's picking up in Adelaide. Lots of infrastructure work coming up down here anyway

On the down side of that, all our Engineers keep getting headhunted by our competitors

That will be a pay issue then!!

no doubt about it!!

1 Billion dollars worth of Improvements start in Coburg next year. The Grollos are involved which means it will definitely happen.

http://thecoburginitiative.com/