About Collette Burke:
Dr Collette Burke, PhD
Inaugural Chief Engineer of Victoria
Collette has been working in engineering for over 30 years and works on projects ranging from water treatment plants in Sydney, Victoria and WA wind farms, Melbourne and Sydney major road tunnels and significant rail infrastructure, new hospitals in Adelaide and Melbourne, and many other road, building, water and infrastructure projects around Australia.
As the Civil Construction Manager for Leighton Contractors, Collette was responsible for the delivery of over $800 million of projects in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
This meant working in directing teams of people and supporting and assisting people to ensure the project’s success.
This drive to deliver engineering projects came at an early age, ever since Collette travelled to Ireland in her early teens, and discovered her relatives had many engineering construction and material supply companies for new infrastructure. So Collette was fiercely motivate to become a construction engineer, building infrastructure in Australia.
Collette was honour to hold the role as Victorian Chief Engineer, being part of the team delivering many billions of dollars in new infrastructure in Victoria. Through this role, she was able to meet teams of people in other states delivering their own large scale infrastructure. Collette also has built Tunnelling training for employees of several tunnels in Victoria and NSW, due to her strong belief in knowledge transfer to young people entering the industry.
It is fascinating to find that Collette has continued the family tradition on working on large scale projects including the original Snowy. Collette’s father worked on the original tunnel in the drill and blast team as part of the original Snowy Mountains project. Also, her father-in-law worked on similar hydro projects around Germany and Australia. Collette’s husband has also been involved with the delivery of major infrastructure around Australia.
Collette is delighted to share her widely diverse experience with you and is delighted to be considered for naming of one of the tunnel boring machines. She hopes to encourage many into this sector and looks forward to seeing the great success of the Snowy Hydro project.