About Engineering Heritage Western Australia (EHWA)
Engineering Heritage Western Australia (EHWA)
The purpose of EHWA is to ensure our engineering heritage is widely valued and appropriately conserved. More information on EHWA is available from Engineering Heritage Australia Divisional Groups.
Specific information on EHWA is available from the attached flyer.
In 2017 the Heritage Council awarded EHWA a Heritage Award in the category of 'Contribution by a Public or Private Organisation'. The Judge's citation states:
Since 1984, Engineering Heritage WA has taken an active role in the identification, promotion and conservation of Western Australia's significant engineering, industrial and technological heritage. Through its leadership and recognition program, it has broadened our understanding of, and the way we think about, heritage.
For more than 30 years, the Engineering Heritage committee of Engineers Australia's WA Division (EHWA) has provided leadership in the protection, conservation and recording of our engineering, industrial and technological heritage.
EHWA continues to celebrate and promote the significant contributions of WA's engineers and their works through the Engineering Heritage Recognition Program, with twenty-five sites now officially recognised and seven oral histories recorded by eminent WA engineers.
EHWA Website
To achieve its purpose EHWA needs to provide information on Western Australia's professional engineers and their achievements. Traditionally this information has been provided in a book but an alternative that is now available is via a website. A website has the advantage that more information can be easily added at a later date and the information is searchable and readily available on home computer and mobile devices.
EHWA's original website at http://ehwa.wikidot.com/ was launched on 10 December 2019. It has since been decided to change from the 'wikidot' software to 'MediaWiki' software and the website was re-launched as https://ehwa.mywikis.wiki/wiki/Main_Page on 15 February 2022.
In developing this website, the period that has been focussed on is from Aboriginal technology through to 1985. On 1 July 1985 there was a major change in the provision of engineering services to Western Australia with the break up of the Public Works Department into the Building Management Authority, Water Authority of Western Australia and the Department of Marine and Harbours. This was followed by a period of regulatory and responsibility changes that saw the outsourcing of Government engineering and day labour engineering activities to private consultants and construction contractors. Describing WA's engineering achievements post 1985 is left to the next generation of engineering historians.
Website Development
The team of engineers who first created this site are: Peter Blockley; Chris Fitzhardinge; Peter Hopwood; Phil Plaisted, Karen Riddette and Mike Taylor.
The story of how this team developed and implemented the site was discussed during a meeting of the national committee of Engineering Heritage Australia on 12th February 2020. A copy of a report to this meeting providing background on the development of the 'EHWA Engineering History Website' and the complementary 'Perth CBD Walking Tour' is available here.
The team would particularly like to acknowledge earlier work on Western Australia's engineering history and biographies by Denis Cumming and Richard Hartley. The team was inspired by Denis Cumming's earlier work titled They built South Australia, Engineers, Technicians, Manufacturers, Contractors and Their Work. Both Denis Cumming and Richard Hartley researched Western Australian engineers' biographies and with our thanks, their efforts have been incorporated into this site.
