It might be a man's world populated by engineers, fitters and boilermakers but it's the women at Dawsons Engineering who keep the cogs turning.

The director is a woman. So is the labour hire manager and the marketing manager, the safety officer, draftsperson and lawyer and the list goes on. Even the latest apprentice boilermaker is a woman, joining two other women apprentices recently taken on by Dawsons Engineering. The entire labour hire division is now all women and also the accounting and payroll areas.

One of the largest suppliers of industrial labour in the region, more than 15,000 files of potential staff are kept on the database with 400 to 600 people on the payroll each week. It’s a far cry from 20 years ago when director Val Dawson had a list of names in a folder and would organise the pays at the kitchen table at home.

What remains the same is Val’s key role in the operation, now supported by daughter Sharon, daughter-in-law Nikki and a team of qualified women. Dawsons began with Val and her husband Keith operating out of their Redlynch home more than two decades ago.

“There were no mobile phones then so mum would spend a lot of time ringing around at night to get the labour for projects,” Sharon remembers. “She’d also pick up the guys and run them to the airport to make the 4.30am flight to the mine.”

Based in Cairns and Townsville, Dawsons Engineering specialises in heavy engineering, industrial labour hire, plate, pipe and structural steel fabrication together with mining, marine and sugar mill repairs. Labour hire and marketing manager Sharon, like her mother, is far more comfortable talking about the other women at Dawsons than herself. “I’m really proud of the women we have here,” she says. “They communicate well with people from all industries and, of course, can multi-task.”

Sharon also gives full credit to husband Marc Ryan, who looks after their four children, their home and the family’s B&B, allowing her to devote time to Dawsons Engineering.

“The idea of renovating, decorating or house work just leaves me cold so it’s wonderful having Marc’s support in all these ways,” Sharon says. The latest addition to the Dawson family and at little more than one month old, Lachlan is nursed by Sharon while she works at her desk and then sleeps next door in Val’s office.

“I took him to a meeting for the first time the other day and some of the men were horrified,” Sharon laughs.

She describes Vicky Torrisi from the demolition and asbestos removal team as one of the “toughest blokes” they employ.

“Vicky’s a licensed asbestos removalist and also has a demolition ticket and works harder and smarter than most men I know.”

A butcher by trade, Vicky says she has “no worries” about working with blokes. Vicky now supervises the team’s demolition and construction work. Just back from a job at Cooktown, Vicky says she particularly enjoys not being “stuck in one place” and that the work is always something different.

Sharon’s sister-in-law Nikki holds the role of civil construction draftsperson, making her almost unique in the region. Nikki thinks there might be only a handful of women working in the same role. “This has been a passion all my life,” Nikki says. She grew up surrounded by plans and drawings with her father a structural draftsperson. “After I went to university and studied graphic design I was taken on by a Cairns architect to do a traineeship,” Nikki says.

“I was basically a Girl Friday for the first 12 months while I studied an Associate Diploma of Building Technology externally.

“It’s a male-dominated world and it took a bit to get my foot in the door. The men in the industry are actually very helpful and quite protective, looking out for me when we’re working around machinery on site.”

Unlike her father, Nikki worked with computer-assisted drafting from day one.

 She moved around a bit gaining experience from organisations including a government department. Now drafting for 12 years, Nikki’s projects include sugar mills, shopping arcades, residential sites and schools.

“I’ve always liked how things go together, the artistic side. I’m definitely not a number cruncher or a letter writer,” she laughs. “It’s most satisfying seeing a project all come together.”Bernie Dalton started with Dawsons as the site manager at Century Mine more than seven years ago and has since been joined by his two daughters, Kim and Lisa.

Kim had been working for a removal company when she decided she needed a change. Starting as a temp, Kim now manages the labour hire and administration for large projects such as the Expansion Project at Groote Eylandt where Dawsons are the mechanical installation contractor. This project alone is expected to swell the existing maintenance workforce on that site by about 120 by the end of the year.

Kim says the people at the mine sites and the labourers are generally not big on change and were used to dealing with men.

“At first they might have thought: ‘Who is this girl’ but now we have a good working relationship,” Kim says. “The project manager tells me what he needs, I make it happen.”

Kim was joined at Dawsons by her sister Lisa in 2006 also in the labour hire area.

Val is justifiably proud of what she describes as a “fantastic company” and of Sharon and the role she plays in marketing the company and managing the labour hire.

“It’s like life, the more you put in to it the more you get out,” Val says.

Share this article