The Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) is returning to Durham St to encourage more young people, especially women, to consider a career in science and technology. The free family event will feature hands-on experiments and aims to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers. Tauranga engineer Victoria Clark has built a successful career using STEM and her work is contributing to our region’s wellbeing and prosperity.
Being the youngest or only woman in a room of engineers isn’t unusual for Victoria Clark. The 30-year-old is a senior environmental engineer with Beca. She leads a team of 12 in Tauranga who are responsible for design, management and construction of water infrastructure, and they also work with colleagues in Hamilton and Auckland.
Being outnumbered by men in her professional life is an extension of her experiences at university where she remembers women making up only 20 per cent of civil engineering classes.
“It was more like 50/50 in my natural resources classes and, on the whole, all the guys knew who we were, but we didn’t know all the guys… they made up the majority. You get used to it.”
While the gender imbalance is currently considered the ‘norm’, Victoria says she’d like to see that change during her career. She’s helping by contributing to The Wonder Project, an Engineering New Zealand initiative aimed at educating school children about the industry by introducing them to design processes and physics concepts. She also talks to senior students about engineering at school career days and she has a keen interest in seeing more young women enter the industry.
“I really enjoy sharing what I do. I went to an all-girls school and there were only three of us who went on to study engineering. The more women like me who share our knowledge about the positive opportunities and experiences in engineering, the more women will enter the field.”
Victoria has been with Beca for over seven years, joining the engineering firm in Christchurch as a graduate. She was involved in the city’s rebuild after the earthquakes as part of the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT), an alliance of consulting companies and contractors. It was an experience that exposed her straight out of university to complex multidisciplinary projects.
“Those projects are good fun,” she says. “My area of expertise is stormwater design, but I enjoy working with people with other technical knowledge across different engineering disciplines. I’m always learning.”
In recent years, her Tauranga water team has been kept busy with the planning and development of the Waiari water treatment plant in Te Puke. It is designed to supplement Tauranga’s water supply to reduce the frequency of city water restrictions over summer.
Every engineering project has its unique challenges, which keeps her work exciting, she says.
“I love the variety it brings. Now being a senior, I’m enjoying having input at a higher level early in the project and influencing how it develops.”
Water infrastructure is often difficult to see, with most of it underground, but she says it’s critical to the functioning of any city or rural area.
“People often don’t realise that a sports field may perform a stormwater management function and one of the largest design aspects of a major new road is its stormwater. With big roading projects, we’re factoring in geometric, geotechnical, structural, civil and landscaping designs, and bringing all those things together into one project.”
