Nicholas Aliwarga
1. What is your job about
My job is essentially designing new developments (buildings / infrastructures) in terms of its acoustic properties, whether it be how much potential noise a new development is going to impose on the existing environment or the acoustic comfort of the building interior (how much external noise goes through inside, how echoey rooms are, how noise moves around in a room etc).
2. What’s your background?
I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from UNSW, where I first encountered environmental and building acoustics through a course that UNSW offers. That made me interested in the field which lead me to dive deeper into the field by choosing Aeroacoustics as the focus of my thesis.
My passion for sound and acoustics is not stuck only in the academics side of it, but personally as well, as music have always been an essential part of my life.
3. Could someone with a different background do your job?
Absolutely!
It might sound daunting to jump in the Acoustics field without any prior experience / knowledge. But I believe it is absolutely something that you can learn on the job with the right mindset.
Having the basics does help ease you in better, but surprisingly, the field of Acoustics is quite vast and in my experience, no amount of digging about the field can truly prepare you for what’s in store.
Best way to learn is to jump in and give a crack at it with a mentality to learn!
4. What’s the coolest thing about your job?
The coolest thing for me is looking at the end product of your design of course! I love doing internal acoustics design and then testing it once it’s done.
This means that we test the acoustic performance of the walls, floors as well as the reverberation time (how echoey it is) of the building. To do this, we bring a massive speaker and blast loud noises and measure how the noise goes through the walls and floors, which makes me feel like a kid again!
5. What are the limitations of your job?
As important and interesting my work is, do acoustics aspect of a development does get overlooked at times by people. It’s something that people don’t exactly notice until they actually need it. A lot of people think that it might be something they can cut cost on, and when they do, then people would complain and get it fixed which would cost much more than actually designing for it.
It’s especially concerning when it affects people’s health (e.g., traffic / train noise disturbing residents sleep at night) or when it renders the building somewhat useless (e.g., school classrooms too echoey which renders the teachers’ lectures extremely hard to understand).
Thus, I believe it is important for people to start to be educated in this matter, and I for one would love to help spearhead this effort.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...
One, I’d tell myself to stop leaving things semi to the last minute and even just 1-2 hours a day worth of work a day can help my assignment progress much more smoothly.
I used to struggle with deadline timings, and had to learn this skill at work, which is fine since better late than never. However, it would be much more ideal to be used to this mentality from my student days.
Two, I’d reach out to companies in a more direct manner for advice and networking.
Even though I attended career fests and did society work, I felt as if it wasn’t really clear in terms of setting my expectations of how industry works. Once I was in industry and started joining more professional networking events (e.g., EA, CIBSE, AAAC events, etc) that were also open to students, that I realised that people are more than willing to share their knowledge and give tips on how to succeed in industry to students than I though. I used to think that people would be less open to students and would just default to full “marketing mode”, just share enough so they’re interested but not really in detail.
Three, manage your stress and concerns in a healthier manner.
Yes, uni work can be daunting and pulling some all nighters can be an inevitability. You need to remind yourself that your health is also critical for your progression. Take proper breaks, don’t be afraid to ask help / advice / ask to work together with other students when doing assignments (not cheating!). This would have helped me experience way less burnouts. The more you break yourself for the sake of grades / goodwill, the more afraid you are going to be to look to the future. Remind yourself, taking a break is okay, people will not shun you out for “appearing” lazy as long as you still do your best. Combined with advice number 1, you’d have smashed university like it’s nothing and you’ll be able to handle anything coming your way.