Female dominated Stantec team completes engineering geology review for Awoonga Dam

A female dominated team from Stantec in Australia and the Philippines recently completed a challenging engineering geology review for Awoonga Dam, south west of Gladstone in Queensland.

The almost entirely female team produced an engineering geological model fit for purpose for the Awoonga Dam Risk Assessment. The team included dam engineers, geospatial advisors, engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers, who worked on data collation, geological mapping, geotechnical drafting, and interpretive reporting.

The Women's Engineering Society showed that in June 2021 only 16.5% of engineers were women; the Awoonga Dam geology review team was made up of 88% women.

"We had a tight budget and a resource constrained workforce for this very large data review work package," says Andrew Barwick, Senior Principal Engineering Geologist. "None of it would have been possible without the skills and can-do attitude of the almost all-female team."

The model provides crucial insight into the subsurface geotechnical characteristics and potential failure modes of Awoonga Dam.

"While our female-dominated team didn't come as a surprise to us, it's still important to reflect upon the fact that women engineers across the world are still hugely under-represented in their professions," says Sahar Mamouri, Senior Dams Geotechnical Engineer.

If Stantec is successful in its bid for the detailed design, the team will get to revisit this work and build on the model.

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Media Contact                                               

Paul Bromiley
Communications & Public Relations Manager—Asia Pacific
Ph: +61 2 9493 9717
paul.bromiley@stantec.com