Sarah Ly is an infrastructure advisory consultant who interned at the Aurecon Brisbane office and joined the business in 2023 as a graduate.
A key highlight from her time as a graduate is attending Limelight events and meeting other emerging professionals.
Sarah shares how her team and Limelight allow her to expand her professional networks and gain insights into different industries to achieve better outcomes for clients, communities and the planet.
What is your background?
My name is Sarah and I’m a consultant in infrastructure advisory. I joined Aurecon in July 2022 as an intern in our Brisbane office and was then offered a graduate position to join the business in 2023.
Prior to that, I was a student at the University of Queensland in Bachelor of Business Management and Bachelor of International Hotel and Tourism Management, majoring in business economics and event management. I chose the 4-year double degree programme because I wanted to develop business skills, connect and work with people from different backgrounds before deciding which field to specialise in.
I have learned many practical skills which can be applied to infrastructure consulting, including communicating effectively, working as a team, and managing time. These skills are useful for my current role because as consultants we need to manage multiple projects and tasks simultaneously and work with stakeholders from a wide range of disciplines to achieve project outcomes.
Can you tell us more about your role at Aurecon?
I work with colleagues and clients across industries including water, energy, transport, and education, spanning private and public sectors. My job is to help them make better infrastructure decisions through research, analysis, and economic modeling so they can provide satisfactory investment returns for stakeholders while also improving the well-being of communities and the environment.
On a regular basis, I work with people locally and across different states of Australia, such as engineers, stakeholder engagement managers and subject matter experts (SMEs).
We work together to help clients navigate integrated planning requirements by providing recommendations on project options and directions that are commercially sensible and have the least negative impact on local communities and the environment. This helps inform actions that improve performance and asset value and enables clients to meet their stakeholder and customer expectations.
I also attend meetings to understand what clients are looking for and discuss the best ways to deliver the required outcomes. One of the projects I completed recently was desktop analysis and research to support our team in understanding the landscape of the water industry to ensure our proposed approach fitted the project objectives. It’s really gratifying the business, economics and research skills I developed at university are being put into real practice.
What do you like about working in your team?
As a recent graduate, I was unsure of what to expect and what the culture would be like at Aurecon. However, since starting here, everyone has been very supportive and open to helping graduates like me to learn. For example, my manager and I have weekly meetings to talk about my workload and discuss useful topics that might help my professional development and understanding of future projects.
My team also organises after work social activities such as dinner gatherings for us to get to know each other better. I enjoy working with my team and have felt very welcomed by my teammates since day one.
What has been the highlight of the Aurecon graduate development programme?
I love going to networking events organised by the Limelight committee because I get the chance to meet other emerging professionals and learn what others might be doing at work.
Particularly for my role as a consultant, I need to work with colleagues across teams, so I enjoy meeting new people at social events before we work together on client projects.
One of my favorite events of Limelight in Brisbane was ‘Games and BBQ’ where we played board games and met with our senior leaders. It was a fun way to connect with people who I hadn’t worked with and expanded my exposure to other divisions within the business.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about applying for Aurecon’s graduate programme?
There are many opportunities and pathways within Aurecon. Our team for example, is made up of people from a wide range of educational backgrounds such as finance, economics, urban planning and engineering.
If you enjoy interacting with people and have a passion for learning about different industries, Advisory might be the right fit for you. Just give it a try, apply, and see where it takes you!