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Monash graduate helps re-build New York

2 July 2008

Monash engineering graduate Marc Colella, who is playing a key role in the rebuilding project at the World Trade Centre site, caught up with his former lecturer Associate Professor Riadh Al-Mahaidi at Monash last week.

At the age of just 35, Monash engineering graduate Marc Colella is playing a key role in the huge rebuilding project at the World Trade Centre site in New York.

Mr Colella is the structural engineer in charge of building the Freedom Tower, a 105-storey building with a 120m spire that will be the biggest of the four towers being built on the World Trade Centre site.

During a brief trip to Melbourne last week Mr Colella visited Monash to speak to staff and students in the Faculty of Engineering about some of the project's complex considerations -- both technical and emotional.

"As designers you have to divorce yourself from the emotional side of a project, otherwise you'll get nothing accomplished," he said.

"You really just have to treat it like any other project. It just happens to be on a complicated and highly-emotional site."

Mr Colella graduated from Monash in 1994 with a Bachelor of Engineering and worked in Melbourne, his home town, for five years on projects including the 28-storey Clarendon Towers Apartments and the 23-storey Grand Russell building. He became a Chartered Member of the Institute of Engineers Australia during this time.

Mr Colella travelled to London in 1999 to work for British firm WSP Group and when that company acquired US firm Cantor Seinuk, to form the WSP Cantor Seinuk Group, he jumped at the opportunity to transfer to New York to work in the city's high-rise building sector. The move came shortly after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

In 2002 WSP Cantor Seinuk Group won the contract to build three of the four new buildings currently under construction on the World Trade Centre site and Mr Colella was asked to lead a team of engineers on the Freedom Tower also known as Tower One.

"That was pretty exciting," Mr Colella said. "It was out of the blue -- I expected that with something that emotional, that they would have asked an American.

"I feel very fortunate that at 35, I've been given the opportunity to work on one of the most exciting projects in the world."

Mr Colella said the skills he developed at Monash had given him a great grounding and the respect Monash's engineering degree had in the industry had helped progress his career.

"In the States your degree is everything - it's: 'where did you go?' I do mention Monash and senior personnel in particular are familiar with it. I think it's fair to say that Monash's engineering degree is respected as the best in Australia."

For more information on studying engineering at Monash visit the Faculty of Engineering website.

Main page image courtesy of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP/dbox and WSP Cantor Seinuk Group.