Hospital deal powers jobs
LOCAL jobs are at the forefront of a contract awarded to Townsville-based mechanical and electrical services contractor Peak ARE by the Mater Private Hospital.
The family-owned firm has been engaged as principal contractor to deliver the design and construction of stage two of the hospital’s Central Energy Plant upgrade in Pimlico.
Peak owner Brad Swaffer said up to 20 tradespeople would be on site at any one time.
In design and construction, it had adopted a prefabricated solution with manageable pieces to support local suppliers and contractors.
It had also applied innovation by using 3D modelling to help prefabricate the project’s cooling tower assembly, structural framing, screening, and most of the piping network.
“With the uncertainty due to COVID-19, I have no doubt that this project provides some comfort to a lot of local businesses and the staff within those businesses,” Mr Swaffer said. “They all have employees with families, as we do of course, so the more that our business can do to support them, the better.”
The works are part of Mater Private Hospital’s capital infrastructure replacement program and will provide it with a more robust system, including an upgraded chilled water supply capacity.
It will also support the needs of the hospital’s recently commissioned Mercy Centre.
Mr Swaffer said the company was proud of the work it was undertaking.
He said the upgrade would increase the capacity of the airconditioning chilled water supply at the campus for the next 20 to 25 years and provide significant energy savings, along with reductions to day-to-day operational costs.
“We’re thrilled to have successfully secured this contract and congratulate the Mater on supporting local people in selecting our Townsville-owned and operated family business,” Mr Swaffer said.
He said Peak had been involved in design decisions, working with Mcclintock Engineering Group on the mechanical and electrical services design, Glynn Tucker Consulting Engineers for the structural design, Engineering Industries Australia for piping prefabrication, Multirig Townsville for the demolition and logistics, Advanced Irrigation for pump sets, and Norfoam Cool Solutions for the climate/acoustic control building materials.
The new system is due to be operational in September.
HAIR-PULLING and the occasional hard pinch aside, sibling rivalry can produce a range of benefits, which is great news for parents who felt that the recent lockdown may have triggered some household harmony.
Families with children who don’t relish each other’s company can take heart: those endless petty squabbles might have been a good thing.
Parenting expert and author Dr Justin Coulson said that parents attempting to eliminate sibling rivalry were usually trying to stop conflict, arguments, competition and comparison, but these were all unavoidable and continued into adulthood.
“Given that consenting, mature adults struggle to live in the same house as one another from time to time, and have these kinds of challenges, I think that it’s patently unfair for us to expect that our children — who did not consent to having a sibling, who did not consent to having to share a room, and who definitely don’t want to have to share the bathroom or their clothing or their toys or whatever — are being expected by us to get along and play happy families and be wonderful
100 per cent of the time,” Dr Coulson said.
“That seems unjust and irrational.”
The eldest of six and now a father of six himself, Dr Coulson said there were remarkable advantages to having siblings — even when those siblings do not get along.
He cited former Oasis frontmen Noel and Liam Gallagher as an example, saying that although the famous brothers were now estranged, the partnership produced lifechanging outcomes.
“It’s through the furnace of family affliction that siblings provide that we learn how to compromise, we learn how to negotiate, we learn how to fight for what we need to stand up for,” Dr Coulson said.
“We learn how to get along when times are tough and we also learn how to create relationships that will endure for a lifetime.
“We learn really important lessons by having sibling conflict and sibling relationships. So the idea that we’re supposed to have our siblings getting along all the time is not only unfair, it’s actually not in the interests of positive and healthy development.
“They’re supposed to have conflict so they can learn the skills that are necessary to do well in life.”
Mother-of-two, Rachael Javes, said there was a different charge in the air whenever her children, Jasmine, 10, and Lucas, 7, were home together.
The dynamic between parent and child changed significantly when she had either of them one-on-one.
“There’s this almost jealousy, this one-upping each other,” she said. “They’re both trying to dob the other in or spark some kind of contention.”
Ms Javes believed that competing for her attention was the main cause of Jasmine’s and Lucas’s flare-ups.
But while the children were rivals, she didn’t believe it was a bad thing.
“A lot of it’s over territory or taking of things. Jasmine gets very upset if Lucas takes anything of hers to play with or use,” Ms Javes said.
“Mostly it’s rivalry around who sits in what seat, who gets to sit closer to me and who gets to sleep in my bed.
“I actually think it’s very healthy. I think it’s very important and I see a lot of friends of mine who are only children and even friends who only have one child, and their children behave quite differently in certain situations, less able to be confrontational.
“I see it as really quite valuable for them as part of their development.”
Interestingly, where Jasmine and Lucas unite best revolves around exactly the same thing that most often divides them: their mum.
“The time that they are best friends is when they are doing something that they know I wouldn’t necessarily approve of,” Ms Javes said.
“They are friends and they have the most fun when they’ve got some kind of little secret joke going on. It might be just something really silly that is not that naughty, but they absolutely thrive on that.”
Leading parenting expert Dr Justin Coulson is the author of three bestsellers on the subject: 21 Days to a Happier Family, 9 Ways to a Resilient Child and 10 Things Every Parent Needs to Know. Here are his top tips for parents to help ease escalating tensions between siblings:
If we can’t be models of kindness ourselves, then we can’t expect that our children will be kind. If we are unkind in our speech, if we are threatening in our responses to our children, if we’re not getting it right ourselves, then there’s just no way that our children are going to get it right. We’ve got to be on higher ground if we’re going to lift others up to where we are.
We need to sit down with the child who is being unkind and ask them, “When you treat your brother like that, have you noticed what happens? How does he feel? What does he do? How does our family feel? How do you feel? How do I feel?” We’re trying to create a sense of perspective and empathy.
Ask them “What’s the deal here? Help me to understand why you’re treating your brother or sister like this. I’m just trying to get to the heart of why you think it’s okay.” Then we explain what our expectations are. Those empathy questions are a great opportunity for us to explain without having to do any talking. Then we empower. “Where do we go from here? How do we make things better? What do you think?”
For more information, see Dr Coulson’s website happyfamilies.com.au
MELISSA Leong says her collection of cookbooks “are front and centre in our house and life”. “Our shelves are groaning with the amount of cookbooks, it’s scary,” Leong laughs.
“We have an open-plan kitchen and living space so it’s really easy to go between the cookbook shelf and kitchen if we’re referencing something.”
Having ghost written a number of cookbooks, including chef Dan Hong’s Mr Hong, the Masterchef judge says there is a wealth of knowledge contained within the different styles of cookbooks in the home she shares with husband, chef-turned-barman Joe Jones.
“I’m not cooking from the Quay cookbook, you know what I mean. We have different sections of cookbooks. (There are) those to be admired — some really gorgeous books out there like Quay by Peter Gilmore that are more about the story and the magic about what can be created through a love and