Soft skills are hard with Gavin Blakey

Season 3, Episode #4

Welcome Season 3 Episode 4

Soft skills are hard…. without true diversity

Gavin Blakey talks to us about the 3 pillars (or the three-legged stool as he calls it!) every engineer should know.

three-legged stool where you have a technical skill, people skill and the organisational skill

He discusses that when you have true gender diversity in engineering, suddenly those soft skills aren’t so hard.

Looking at the cross section of society, it’s quite different to the cross section of engineering

And he is an engineer who has experienced and witnessed such equality on engineering projects.

We can get much better outcomes as a profession, as a community, as a society if that was a little bit more balanced

But how can more women be enticed into engineering?

females are picking up the link between the work that engineers do and the difference that we can make in the world.

Gavin points out the facts and figures in the EWB Gender Redefined report for some of the statistics that were discussed in the episode.

Gavin Blakey holding Engineering Redefined

Gavin Blakey holding the Engineering Redefined report

Extra discussions during the episode

Future: Gavin is very optimistic.

It’s never been this fast before, and it’ll never be this slow again

Advice: Consider merging fields outside of engineering for real strength

I would say to people be open to areas outside engineering

And get yourself skilled up in areas outside your core strength

completely transformed my ability in my career to be able to be more effective as an engineer

Interesting item: Wifi

a metaphor in some ways for what engineering is doing …. Wifi is now connected devices, which connects people.

Engineer Gavin admires: David Unaipon

David Unaipon on the Australian $50 note

Although not a traditional engineer, he was truely brilliant.

David Unaipon is representative of inventors, creators, amazing Australians, but also indigenous engineers

About Gavin Blakey

Gavin Blakey, Civil & Humanitarian engineer

Gavin attended James Cook University and achieved a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours in Civil Engineering and has also obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Management and an MBA in Technology Management.

The bulk of his career he has been an engineer for Brisbane City Council as well as being heavily involved with Engineers Without Borders, where he is currently the Chair of the Board. He was also the first Australian elected as International President of Toastmasters International.

Gavin was Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for worldwide services to the community in communication and leadership development, particularly through Toastmasters International. And was Awarded the National Emergency Medal for significant contributions to managing the response to the devastating floods in Brisbane in 2011.

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