15 minute read
Women in Manufacturing
Women choose engineering careers for a purpose, not a Porsche
By Margie Smithurst
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As Principal at Hatch, an engineering services company in Brisbane, Lana Van Wyk heads up projects that focus on the transition to clean energy.
With a background in chemical and mining engineering, Lana is currently representing Hatch on the Green Hydrogen Consortium group, formed by Hatch, Anglo American, BHP, and Fortescue to collectively find ways to use green hydrogen across their global operations and projects, as well as drive the uptake of hydrogen technologies in the mining industry.
Lana sat down with Industry Update to talk about why Hatch forecasts strong growth in female engineers, particularly in areas of sustainability and environment.
Lana Van Wyk: In my generation there were fewer than 15 percent of us who graduated as female engineers. But every successive generation has seen more and more, so we’re comfortable this trend will continue.
Our graduate intake at the moment is half and half - half of the graduates at the lowest university level are female.
But in some areas we’re seeing more women than men. For example, there’s a huge interest in anything renewable and to do with green energy or sustainable and environmental engineering. I don’t know why women are more interested in saving the planet but they are!
I think it’s because new roles
are being created in newer areas like renewables, solar, and lithium hydroxide, and it’s easier for women because there’s no preconceived bias about what success looks like.
I know not everyone will agree with my view, but if I go to an industrial steel plant that’s been running for 30 years and I ask to see the maintenance manager, then I’ll bet you on 99% of sites the main manager will fit a very specific profile. So it’s harder for women to fit that profile because they don’t look like the previous five guys who did the job.
Whereas, in new energy technology, we’re seeing women in a lot of executive and senior roles.
Unfortunately that demonstrates there’s still bias in the old areas, but it also shows that in new areas, women can be just as successful as men in every single way.
Industry Update: What do you think drives women’s interest in that sort of engineering?
Lana Van Wyk: I think most women have a strong sense of wanting to do something that matters, especially once we have families. You come back to work and you’re always trading off time at work versus family, so it has to be something that drives you and excites you. And we know some men are more driven by competition and being successful and earning more money, and women seem to be a lot more purposeful.
So, in engineering, for example, we see women choosing careers that are purposeful over careers that might pay a lot or where you get to drive a Porsche. Very few women have a goal to drive a Porsche. They want to leave a legacy.
I’m seeing more male leaders come through like that - they are more caring, compassionate and more purposeful. So there’s definitely a trend, and in future it won’t be a male/ female trend, there’s a trend towards more compassionate, purposeful leaders who want to make a difference as opposed to ones that just want to make a profit.
Industry Update: How do we get more women involved in engineering?
Lana Van Wyk: We still have only 17 percent of the current engineering crop in this country being females. An alarming amount of girls don’t want to study maths and science. It’s my view that one of the reasons is that we don’t show enough paths for engineering as a career. I often see lots of pic- Lana Van Wyk, Principal at Hatch tures of women i their highvis and hard hats, and I get it - I’m an engineer and on sites quite often. But nine out of 10 days I’m in the office, and I get to wear my favourite Australian designers and my favourite stilettos, and I think that’s an important message to put out there.
I didn’t become an engineer because I enjoy dust and dirt and grease. To attract more girls, it’s important that we showcase the broad variety of careers that engineering has to offer for women, and a lot of them “Nine out of 10 days I’m don’t involve high-vis, hard hats and safety boots. Personally, I have had a in the office, and I get to wear my favourite very rewarding engineering career and have spent a very Australian designers and small amount of time on mine sites. my favourite stilettos” In our office, we have a large number of women as design engineers, and they show up everyday and work in an office environment. Certainly, I think the mining industry needs to clean up its act and get rid of all the allegations of toxic behaviour and so on, but there needs to be an overall message that it’s not all sitebased work in locations that might not be attractive.
Making women leaders in engineering more visible
Lana Van Wyk: At the moment, 30 percent of Hatch employees are women, and as in most companies, there are definitely fewer women at the top than the bottom. But I’m very confident that having more females in senior management will improve as we see more female engineers move up the ranks.
But it’s really important to us to be visible so that girls know we exist, and that they can also be a senior leader.
And that brings an opportunity - we’re not as visible as we think we should be because we come from a generation that didn’t do Instagram or Facebook the whole time.
There are some fantastic examples
of visible females at BHP and I really admire how prominent their female leaders are on social media.
Hatch (hatch.com) is an award-winning multidisciplinary leader in engineering, operational and development projects in metals, energy and infrastructure – and comprises a talented team that includes many female engineers and leaders in a market where women make up just 28 per cent of STEM workers. At Hatch, these women represent the best in the industry, with decades of experience and a strong vision for their projects across Australia, where they engage with Indigenous communities, help Australia meet emissions targets and help deliver a better, more sustainable future.
Hatch
hatch.com
Sanofi doubles Brisbane solar farm
Healthcare company Sanofi Australia has installed 1,500 solar panels at its Brisbane healthcare manufacturing campus and will in future double this to 3,000 panels
At an event attended by The Hon. Anika Wells MP, Federal Minister for Aged Care, Federal Minister for Sport and Member for Lilley, 1,500 rooftop solar panels were unveiled.
The expanded panel population will include new solar panel-topped car shades across the campus car park and new electric charge points for employee vehicles.
When completed in 2023, Sanofi’s solar farm will save approximately 1,400 tonnes of CO2 and deliver 2GwH of electricity — more than one quarter of the site’s annual electricity needs and equivalent to powering about 200 Brisbanebased homes for an entire year.
It’s wonderful to see businesses in our local area acting on climate change and prioritising green energy to help future-proof our community,” said the Hon. Anika Wells, Member for Lilley.
Karen Hood, Sanofi ANZ’s Country Lead, said that environmental action taken by everyone is key to protecting the health of people worldwide.
“Globally Sanofi is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 and net-zero by 2050,” said Hood.
“We have started a number of major programs to deliver on this, including switching to renewable energy across all global operations.
Other actions taken by Sanofi in Australia to meet its global environmental commitments include: •The move to a hybrid car fleet which is now 75% complete. •A new initiative this year, Return
Unwanted Medicines, to help raise awareness of the environmental
impact of incorrect disposal of unwanted medicines •Sanofi brand Nature’s Own has begun a three-year partnership with
Greening Australia to restore natural ecosystems by planting 25,000 native plants across three major
Australian cities. Phase one of the rooftop solar farm was installed by Smart Commercial Solar.
Sanofi
sanofi.com.au
Industry Update’s regular Women in Manufacturing section is dedicated to showing the contributions of women to Australia’s manufacturing industry. It’s a response to the industry’s desire to encourage more women to take up manufacturing careers, as well as to showcase the variety of jobs on offer.
Australia’s manufacturing industry employs more than a million people directly or indirectly, but data shows only 1 in 4 are women, well below the national average of 51 per cent. Industry heavyweights would like to see that number improve dramatically.
This year, the Federal Government announced an additional $6.7 million in funding towards programs to attract more women into STEM roles. And this edition shows how women who pursue STEM careers, or who are interested in how things are made, are valuable contributors to manufacturing companies, at both engineering and operations levels.
If you think you or someone you work with would make a great feature in Industry Update’s regular section on Women in Manufacturing, please contact the magazine via editor@industryupdate.com.au.
Dual-purpose trolley with heavy duty central lock Tente castors
Turning to Tente for bespoke parts
By Margie Smithurst
About a decade ago, when Air Ambulance NSW asked innovative Melbourne-based trolley manufacturers Service Assist to build a fully motorised and height adjustable helipad retrieval trolley, managing director Paul Linehan knew it would be a challenge.
“It needs to meet the helicopter out on the helipad, and in a lot of country hospitals, that’s sometimes over in the paddock. They’d have six people pushing a patient stretcher with thin wheels.”
Making something more robust that can travel over bumpy ground and not disturb the patient required heavy duty castors on the wheels. Castors that Linehan couldn’t find in any of his suppliers.
“We wanted a heavier, thicker rubber castor,” he says.
Tente, with whom Linehan has a 20 year working relationship, already made castors with the central locking that the trolleys needed. But because they were still too light duty for the task, he and his team had to take them apart and rebuild them. “We needed a wider fork (wheel frame), so we were cutting open their forks and manufacturing a plate and rewelding that. It was a nightmare and it looked terrible.” For a number of years, Linehan and his team kept going with their bespoke solution, thinking there must be something better.
“We kept scouring around various castor suppliers, until one day Grant [Smith, Managing Director] and Damien [Lane, sales representative] from Tente came out here and I was talking to them about it, and they had just released a heavy duty central lock castor.
“And it was absolutely perfect for what we wanted and we’ve been using it ever since.
“It vastly improved the product overall, cut costs and definitely cut time. And it’s a lot more robust and reliable as well.
“No one in the world has a similar castor that I’ve seen.”
Service Assist now makes the trolleys (which cost $21,000) for other states, and has modified them to suit other purposes the hospitals need.
“For example, [we make] what I call a ‘concealment’ trolley, which is used to take a deceased body to the morgue.
“So rather than the plastic deck with the rails that they have for the helipad one, we make this as a stainless steel, cleanskin top with a cover. But the base of it - the wheels, the motor drive, the height-adjustability - is all the same as a helipad trolley.”
Service Assist also turns to Tente when they need more aesthetically pleasing castors.
“There is one particular trolley we do that we sell to the Red Cross Blood service, and we use a black Levina Tente castor because the rest of the trolley is black and it looks great.”
Linehan’s long relationship with Tente means he has also turned to them to solve a problem he had when it came to foot pedals, which are used to raise and lower the trolley motors.
“We usually buy a complete foot pedal and cut it in half, machine it, and then smooth it off, which takes a lot of time. Tente has one that’s already cut in half, and they’re better quality than the ones we’ve been using as well.
“They [the single foot pedals] will save us a heap of time, trouble and cost, because it’s an off the shelf solution that fits exactly what I need.
“So that’s something new we’ll be getting from them going forward as well.”
Linehan says he has come to rely on Tente and their expertise to enable him to continue building his customised trolleys and lifting devices.
“Tente is very good at finding a solution to a castor request or issue that I have. They’ve always got something up their sleeve.
“I don’t always use Tente, because
there’ll be another castor that suits the application better, but I’ll talk to them and say, I need you to do a castor like that because I prefer to buy it off you because I get better service and better knowledge from those guys.
“So I’m always at them to try and change something so I can buy it off them. “
“More often than not when I need to buy a castor, it’s a Tente castor.”
Mock trial of helipad retrieval trolley
Tente
Vaxxas gets $8.2 million grant to support scale-up in its Brisbane manufacturing facility
Biotech company Vaxxas will receive an AU$8.2 million second round grant as part of the Australian Federal Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative (MMI) to support the manufacturing scale-up of its potentially game-changing technology that enables vaccines to be applied to the skin using a small patch.
In 2021, Vaxxas received AU$4.4 million first round MMI funding to support the specialised infrastructure necessary to manufacture its high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP) device at its state-of-the-art biomedical facility currently under construction at Northshore, Brisbane.
This additional support will allow the team to develop and establish a sterile production line using proprietary aseptic fill and finish processes at the facility, further advancing the company’s vaccine coating, device sealing and quality control technologies.
The Brisbane production facility will support late-stage clinical trials and early commercial production.
“We are incredibly grateful to the Australian Federal Government for their ongoing support of our vaccination technology,” Vaxxas Chief Executive Officer David Hoey said.
“It is fantastic to see the Government backing innovations by local companies that have the potential to make a difference to lives in Australia and around the world.”
The Vaxxas HD-MAP uses an ultrahigh-density array of micro projections – invisible to the human eye – applied to the skin as a patch to rapidly deliver vaccine to the abundant immune cells immediately below the skin surface.
The vaccination technology has the potential to fundamentally improve pandemic and routine vaccination through production efficiencies, breadth and speed of access, and population coverage.
With support from the Queensland State Government, the Vaxxas Biomedical Facility is being constructed in Northshore, Brisbane and due to open in early 2023.
In addition to relocating its existing workforce of more than 100 employees to the site, the new facility will support the creation of 29 new highly-skilled jobs and the ongoing growth and development of the biotech and medtech sectors in South East Queensland.
Launched in October 2020, the Federal Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative aims to drive lasting change to Australia’s manufacturing sector by co-funding large manufacturing projects with a particular focus on supporting business to scale. It has six key areas of focus: Resources Technology & Critical Minerals Processing; Food & Beverage; Medical products; Recycling & Clean Energy; Defence; and Space.
Vaxxas will work with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources over the coming weeks to finalise grant details.
About Vaxxas
Vaxxas is a privately held biotechnology company focused on enhancing the performance of existing and next-generation vaccines with its proprietary high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP). Vaxxas core technology was initially developed at the University of Queensland.
About Vaxxas’ HD-MAP Technology
The Vaxxas proprietary HD-MAP technology platform uses an ultra-high-density array of micro projections – invisible to the human eye – applied to the skin as a patch to rapidly deliver vaccine to the abundant immune cells immediately below the skin surface. This approach can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of resulting immune responses of vaccines. Vaxxas uses proprietary dry-coating technology to apply an active and stable vaccine onto the projections which offers the potential to eliminate the need for vaccine refrigeration during storage and transportation – easing the resource and logistics burden of maintaining the refrigerated “cold chain.” Ease of use of the HD-MAP could enable simplified administration, potentially encompassing self-administration.
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