Celebrating diverse engineering experience

MELISSA Blyton has been a qualified engineer since last century, and has worked for large and small businesses in the public and private sectors as well as in academia.

She called Geelong home for over 25 years and is now the principal civil engineer at PM Design.

Like many women in engineering, Melissa’s career pathway has been diverse and dynamic. She began as a project engineer at Barwon Water before moving into teaching and tutoring engineering at Deakin University.

Her professional journey also includes experience in financial reporting and heavy vehicle sales at Ritchie Bros Auctioneers, project management at APCO, as well as engineering roles with the Golden Plains Shire.

Melissa later joined the City of Greater Geelong as a senior engineer, further strengthening her leadership and technical expertise, to end there as principal infrastructure engineer, before joining PM Design.

Throughout her career, Melissa has gained extensive experience across infrastructure planning and delivery, municipal engineering, project management and mentoring emerging engineers.

Her broad exposure to both technical and strategic roles has given her a well-rounded perspective on the challenges and opportunities within the civil engineering profession.

Her project portfolio is diverse and substantial. It includes conducting the construction audit of a 5 megalitre portable water tank for the Anglesea township with Barwon Water, contributing to the central and south Geelong stormwater services strategies, and overseeing practical completion works for Wyuna stage one in Elliminyt.

She has delivered sewer and stormwater serviceability assessments for Garden Street in Portland and successfully negotiated with council and Regional Roads Victoria to secure approvals for turning lanes, equipment procurement, and planning and building permits for Early Bird Baristas’ drive-through coffee shop in Bannockburn during the 2020 lockdown period.

Melissa has demonstrated strong capability in managing complex approval environments, including overseeing 97 planning permit conditions throughout the construction phase and delivering the APCO Wagga Service Station remotely through to handover in November 2020.

Her technical expertise also extends to the rehabilitation, remediation and ground stabilisation of a former landfill site in preparation for a new service station development.

As project manager for the north and western Geelong growth area, she delivered the technical components of stormwater design, including stormwater harvesting and development contributions plan inputs for the Creamery Road Precinct Structure Plan.

She was invited to join Barwon Water’s Large Scale Alternative Water Grid Working Group and has been an active participant in DEECA’s Priority Waterways in Regional Victoria workshops.

More recently, she led pre-construction works at Mt Duneed APCO, coordinating the removal of utility clashes within the road reserve prior to the installation of an auxiliary left turn lane.

Collectively, these experiences reflect Melissa’s depth of technical knowledge, strategic insight and proven ability to deliver complex infrastructure outcomes.

Drawing on this wealth of experience, Melissa will speak at the Geelong Regional Engineers Breakfast at the Novotel on 12 March, where she will share her insights and expertise with the community.

For more information, head to greg.asn.au