Council engineer wins excellence award

Eurobodalla Council Design Officer Thomas Franzen has been named Young Leader of the Year in the NSW engineering industry’s night of nights.

Mr Franzen won the David Abbott Award for Young Leader of the Year at the 2018 Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia NSW Engineering Excellence Awards last week.

The award recognised Mr Franzen as a dedicated and valued young leader who had an “outstanding reputation” for his collaborative style, respect for others’ ideas and mentoring role to others.

Having completed a Bachelor of Business and worked in the family real estate business, Mr Franzen made a career change to engineering 10 years ago, undertaking a design traineeship with Council.

He is in his final year of honours of a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) and works behind the scenes at Council designing things like roads, roundabouts, pathways and streetscapes. He is no stranger to awards, having received an impressive list of accolades throughout his academic career, however Mr Franzen said the latest award came as a “complete shock”.

“It is a real honour to receive this award and I have to thank my family and teammates, as I couldn’t have done it without them,” he said.

“I love engineering, it’s a role where you can shape the environment in which you work, and make a real difference to the way people live – and you get to see the results of your efforts.”

Council’s Infrastructure Services Director Warren Sharpe praised Mr Franzen as a leader who consistently motivated those around him.

“We’re very proud of Tom for winning this award, which is well deserved,” he said.

“He has delivered a range of challenging infrastructure designs and Tom is highly regarded within his team and throughout our community for excellence and integrity.”

Eurobodalla Council was also recognised at the awards for the Corrigans Reserve Inclusive Playground project. It was named highly commended in the award for the design and construction of a local government/public works project greater than $500,000.

Mr Sharpe said the award category had a record number of high-quality nominations.

“We’re very pleased that this collaborative project was recognised - the fact it was highly commended was a wonderful achievement,” he said.

“The vision for the playground was to deliver a facility that could be enjoyed by people of all abilities. It is now a fantastic unique and accessible community space that is proving to be a key tourist attraction.”