After a successful 2025 campaign, the Let’s Locate Canberra program returns for 2026.
By Greg Ledwidge
The Let’s Locate Canberra team has come together to deliver a revised program for 2026, following the highly successful 2025 program.
What we learnt last year was that five-day events are a significant challenge, both for the team to deliver and for the students involved.
So this year we will deliver immersion events in a four-day format, with all the essential program components still intact.
Pitch perfect
It will begin with the Geospatial Taster Day to be held on Monday, 4 May at Geoscience Australia (GA) in Symonston, ACT. The event team, coordinated by Ali Carrera, will again work with GA staff and volunteers to deliver several challenging geospatial- and surveying-related problem-solving activities. A huge thank you to GA for backing the program by providing facilities and staff.
That will be followed by a four-day Planning and Geospatial immersion event to be held from 6 to 9 July during the school holidays. Students will again be given a challenging planning design brief and be guided to deliver a design project plan and report, before pitching it to real industry representatives.
During the event there will be multiple opportunities for planners and geospatial professionals to demonstrate what they do and talk about their career experiences. Last year, Michael Vernon from Emergency Services in the ACT captivated students with his real time helicopter fire front mapping presentation. Damian Heffernan, the event coordinator, will be looking for more such gems this year.
Critical thinking
Rounding out the year will be the four-day Surveying and Mapping immersion event from Monday, 28 September to Thursday, 1 October (during the school holidays) and coordinated by young surveyor, Mitch Mackenzie.
Last year, working in small groups, the students began with a brief to perform a detail survey of a site, and then had to advise their ‘client’ as to how best to develop the site based on client prescribed requirements.
The students worked with local surveyors to deliver the detail/feature survey which incorporated aerial imagery and LiDAR data. They then prepared a survey report and presented it and their solution to the client in a face-to-face meeting.
In addition to learning about surveying equipment, geodesy and map projections, the students were again required to exercise critical thinking and presentation skills.
It was great to see how they innovated with their presentation methods, pivoting from PowerPoint slides to sit-down conversations as required.
I can’t wait for this event this year.
Career opportunities
I would like to acknowledge the ongoing support from the Institution of Surveyors NSW, Surveying Careers NSW, the numerous sponsors and all the volunteers who give up their time to assist Let’s Locate. We are looking forward to working with old and new volunteers again this year.
Since the 2025 events, we have seen an increase in students undertaking work experience in the Canberra region. Two enthusiastic students who attended both 2025 immersion events went on to undertake work experience as surveyors. A good result.
And I am reminded of our very first event, where a young woman said at the end of the program, “All I thought I could do was hospitality — I never thought I could do something like this”.
If you are interested in helping students see the opportunities they could have with a geospatial career, then please email me at greg.ledwidge@act.gov.au.
Greg Ledwidge is the Surveyor-General of the Australian Capital Territory.
