We caught up with Ken to ask him about his years in the industry and the highlights within.
Ken Wright has been an Engineer with Keller for 15 years. He is a well-respected employee and has had numerous positions over the years - currently holding the title of Senior Engineer in our Victorian office. With Ken’s extensive experience in pile testing, he is managing the significant pile testing program down on the Westgate tunnel Project.
One of Ken’s career highlights was working for Pile Dynamics Inc / GRL Associates in the USA for a year, testing piles all around Florida, from Miami to Jacksonville, Gulf Coast and Alabama. His final assignment was two months of testing steel tubes for an oil platform from a heavy lift barge in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Doha. The USA trip was a great experience for my wife and I before we settled down and started a family back in Melbourne.
How have things changed?
“Obviously modernised piling and testing equipment and the pace of work from tendering, design, and construction all the way through to completion of the project has increased overall. Advances in communication technology…..sounding very old but emails just came in when I graduated and we’d just finished using 3 ½ inch floppy disks for computer data storage. The Pile Driving Analyser (PDA) had an oscilloscope for a screen and data was recorded on an audio tape deck. Back then I would not have imagined Skype and all the video teleconferences that we now do!”
What is Keller doing well?
“The focus on safety and team involvement to make sure the workplace is safe, has never been better. Having said that, there’s always room for improvement and from my recent full-time appointment on site, Keller is constantly listening and making improvements.