Judith Makinson is the Transportation Engineering Manager at CKL in Hamilton, a firm that specialises in providing technical services to land development and infrastructure projects.
Judith joined CKL two-and-a-half years ago to set up the transportation engineering side of the business and it has gone from strength to strength since then, providing transportation engineering services across the North Island.
“Transportation engineering is a fascinating field,” says Judith. “It’s essentially about moving people and goods, taking in all modes of transport and figuring out the best way to help people access those goods and services. There is always a new challenge on each and every project, regardless of scale.”
Recently CKL has been working with the Kimihia Lakes Community Trust on their rehabilitation project for Huntly East Mine. “They’re letting the mine fill with water naturally and they have plans to develop a water-based education centre for schools, passive recreation areas, accommodation and a mine museum. We’ve provided an Integrated Transportation Assessment to support their submission to the Waikato District Plan review to hopefully create a new recreation zone that will allow them to do their amazing work more easily. It’s a fantastic vision.”
What Judith loves about her job is its human dimension – how she and her team can create transportation environments that will work best for people. “Often we have to second guess how people will behave, in a large and busy car park for example, but that’s part of the fun. We’re engineering on a human scale.”
The number of women studying engineering is increasing, but it can be a struggle to retain them in the industry, Judith says. “Covid-19 showed that it is absolutely possible to have a career in engineering and work flexibly. Hopefully more of our employers and women engineers will have learned from that and see that there doesn’t have to be a choice between career and family.”
