Michael Walz
The most beneficial skill that I learnt was the knowledge of how to approach problems.
What exactly does your work/job entail?
At Veolia, I work as part of the Asset Management team. Our team works to support the delivery of water and waste services throughout the company. The goal of our team is to reduce the long-term costs of running the infrastructure with an integrated management of investment and risk. A large part of this is the capture of maintenance data including costs. This allows for the development of strategies and models that allow the company to better predict and manage costs/resources. As an Asset Data and Reporting Engineer, my role is to deal with all the process and systems surrounding the capture, processing and reporting of data that is critical to effective asset management.
As a System Administrator for Veolia’s CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System), my day-to-day tasks include:
- Supporting / Training End Users
- Diagnosing and resolving system issues
- System configuration and set up for new
- Data analysis and report generation
- Analysing and developing business and system workflows
- Developing new software solutions
- Project Management for new site deployments.
What part of your work inspires you the most? Why do you find it interesting?
Using data to solve problems and answer questions. Starting to solve a problem, initially all the data (answers) are there, but the challenge is to use that data to give an accurate predication of what will happen—and then being able to explain and present that in a way that is easy and quick to understand. As the needs of the business are always changing, there is always a new question and a new problem to solve.
How did you get to your current role?
During my studies, I completed an internship at the CSIRO Centre of Energy Technology, which focused on software development and data analysis. This is where I developed my passion for all things data.
After graduation, I followed this passion into web development, where I worked primarily on databases before accepting a graduate role at Veolia. The role required someone who had studied Bachelor Science majoring in Physical Sciences or Bachelor or Engineering and having both, it suited me well.
I was a graduate for 1.5 years before moving to the role of Asset Systems Engineer. From there I moved to my current role as Asset Data and Reporting Engineer.
Do you find the skills you learnt during your degree useful and versatile? If so how?
Yes, absolutely. I find the most beneficial skill that I learnt from studying science was the knowledge of how to approach problems. Science teaches you to look at problems in a certain way and gives you the tools that you need to break that problem down, find out what is happening, get the answer and then apply that knowledge to other areas. It is not about applying a formula and getting an answer, but about understanding why you are getting that answer. This ability to approach problems in this way has helped me significantly throughout my career.
