Humanitarian Engineering

Sarah Davies

Time: 10 July 2018, 18:30 AEDT (Networking from 18:00)

Venue: The Unicorn Club, MHSOBA Melbourne High School, Forrest Hill, South Yarra

The Committee of the SMBE Victoria has invited an International Speaker to the Special July meeting next Tuesday 10 July to talk about Real World Engineering.

Sarah Davies is a chemical engineer with extensive experience in the delivery of humanitarian aid in countries recovering from disaster or conflict. Sarah initially spent 10 years working in water and sanitation in the private sector and made the switch to the humanitarian sector 14 years ago working in some 20 countries since. Most recently she has been involved in the response to the movement of the Rohingya population from Myanmar to Bangladesh and completed assignments in North Korea and Syria.

Applying her skills as an engineer Sarah has worked to improve the health of communities through better water supply, sanitation and hygiene through interventions ranging from building simple pit latrines in remote locations through to working on a larger scale with municipal service providers installing mechanical pumps and repair of sewerage networks.

Sarah has used her engineering training not only in the applied sense of finding technical solutions but more importantly understanding how to work with people within different cultures and contexts to ensure interventions are appropriate and sustainable.

Sarah will talk about her experiences and in particular the way her engineering training and experience prepared her for her roles in international aid organisations which has at times extended way beyond her initial ideas of what engineers can contribute.