On 26 July 2017 history was made at the Ginninderry project team office, with the arrival of year 10 Kingsford Smith High School student Jenny Dao, as the team’s first ever work experience participant.

The project team met Jenny during a visit to Kingsford Smith High School as part of an exercise to gauge community interest on repurposing the former West Belconnen Landfill site. Discussion with team members soon revealed that while interested in nursing, Jenny was also keen to apply her talents for drawing and as such, elected to spend her two weeks’ worth of work experience as a member of the Ginninderry project team.

Working to Ginninderry Design Manager, Hoa Luu, Jenny learned how to apply her drawing to design in relation to architecture, where she was tasked with the project of designing a fit-out for the café planned for Ginninderry’s sales office. The café needed to be able to cater for team meetings and conferences, all visitors to the sales office, and host functions when necessary.

Jenny was enthusiastic and eager to learn. After measuring the café area, she quickly learned how to create scale drawings, bubble diagrams and floor plans, demonstrating a keen understanding of scale and spatial awareness.

With her designs and two weeks nearly complete, Jenny also learned how to produce an ideas board and a presentation brief to present her work. On her last day of work experience, she presented her final designs to the team. She impressed them not only with her designs but her initiative, as she had used the building video game Minecraft to construct a 3D model of her design to accompany the drawings.

At the conclusion of her placement, Jenny left the team with new plans for her future. In her time at Ginninderry she had discovered a new calling, and now has ambitions for a career in architecture.

On her departure Jenny thanked the team, saying “for the last two weeks doing work experience here, I have learned so much. I’ve also had a good time and everyone is so supportive and helpful. Thank you for giving me such a great opportunity which will help me to have some directions for my future.”