Updating Results

John Holland

4.3
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

James Dowzard

My day will usually start with some planning. I always like to have goals for my day in terms of what I want to achieve. 

Provide an overview of all your rotations to date:

For the past two years I have worked on Sydney Metro Northwest delivering the Operations, Trains and Systems Package (worth around $3 billion).

What does your typical workday look like?

My day will usually start with some planning. I always like to have goals for my day in terms of what I want to achieve. 

My work is office-based so depending on where the project is, I am usually involved in developing a report to make an assurance argument, or another key report I worked on was to demonstrate that the design was capable of meeting its high-level targets for trains running on time. 

I also assist in other areas of the systems engineering team such as requirements, usually writing scripts to automate some of the processes we need to execute as a project. Programming is an extremely useful way to remove the need for manual processes and enable our project team to utilise their specific expertise more often throughout the day.

What has been the most interesting thing about your job?

The exposure to the largest public-private partnership is something I have come more recently to appreciate. 

What keeps the work I do interesting is that the project lifecycle always moves forward, meaning you are always working towards a huge milestone – completing the project, which then brings benefit to the communities we work in.

What are the limitations of your role?

Being a graduate can be seen as a limitation, however, I use it as an opportunity to ask lots of questions and learn a lot from people with a lot of experience.

What is something you wish you knew before you started?

To back yourself more. It is easy to stand off a bit when working with people with over 30 years’ experience. More and more though, I have come to back myself and just see it as a level playing field, which has reaped rewards for me.

How did you prepare for starting on the Graduate Program?

I went to South America for a month! Before this program, I had worked with John Holland for a year as an undergraduate so for me, I was comfortable entering the program.