Jon Cooke
Graduate Economist
What your expectations were versus reality?
I came in with a very limited knowledge about what exactly consultancies did, especially in the breadth of work that AECOM does. I did have an underlying expectation that graduates would be making coffee and picking up dry-cleaning but in reality I have had many opportunities to have almost full autonomy on projects which I work on from start to finish. I have also had opportunities to contribute to some of the extremely high-profile infrastructure projects happening, which I also find very satisfying.
Tell us about a cool project you have worked on, and what you got to do on it.
In a team comprised of AECOM members across different states, we developed a pilot study designed to improve customer communication across the network for a public transport operator. I was given autonomy to shape the project in my own way to meet the client’s needs which allowed me to directly reference my specific areas of interest (social inclusion) from university. We worked with a graphic design company to develop a final product which we then presented to the client’s CEO and other important stakeholders.
What do you consider a key achievement so far?
Writing a letter with an attached summary report on behalf of the Food Bowl Inland Rail Alliance (a group of regional local councils) to the Minister for Infrastructure, the Hon Warren Truss MP and the federal government with the goal to alter the proposed alignment of the future Inland Freight Rail project to service their areas.
Tell us about the graduate program training, and the connections you have made
There have been many different opportunities within the graduate program to learn more about AECOM and consulting in general. It has been invaluable to understand more about how things work within the company and other peoples experiences in consulting. Meeting the other graduates across different business lines has been really interesting and allowed me to build relationships with teams I will no doubt work with on projects in the future.
Who has helped you develop your skills to date?
Everybody within the Infrastructure Advisory team has a different background and has been extremely helpful for anything I have needed to know. Since what IA does is so broad it has really given me opportunities to work on a broad variety of jobs across different disciplines.