2022 is a year of new life beginnings for one of Roadside Services and Solutions graduate engineers and estimators and also marks a first milestone for Roadside Services and Solutions in opening new doors of work for overseas talent.
For the first time in the almost 13 year history of Roadside Services and Solutions, Roadside embarked on the journey to become accredited by the Department of Foreign Affairs as a sponsoring employer for temporary work skill visa applicants.
Graduate Engineer Mayur Solanki, who hails from Mumbai in India, was employed by Roadside Services and Solutions in December 2019 has recently received confirmation he has been accepted into Australia on a Temporary Skills Shortage Visa which has been gained by the sponsoring support of Roadside.
The visa allows Mayur four years residency in Australia and giving him the continuity to deliver his great talents and skills to the Roadside team and Roadside’s clients.
Mayur Solanki arrived in Australia in 2018 to undertake a Masters of Construction and Infrastructure Management at Swinburne University. On 1 September 2019 he started as an intern at Roadside and later that year joined the team full time.
In the 2.5 years Mayur has been working at Roadside he has worked as a project manager in linemarking and the civil and construction division coordinating all the inputs and requirements for jobs of all sizes.
Mayur approached Roadside management in 2020 if they would consider sponsoring him to continue his stay in Australia so he could develop his career more broadly.
Roadside CEO Daryl Evans said, “Roadside had not undertaken such sponsorship previously and it was very much a learning process for us. We were finding it incredibly difficult to find the talent we needed in the business. The borders had shut, we were in the thick of COVID lockdowns, and we needed good talent on our team to service our clients.
“Mayur had been with us for a year by this stage and was a very promising young talent in our company that we didn’t want to lose, so through a partnership with an immigration agent and lots of paperwork along the way … and I mean lots … Roadside was granted approval from the Department of Foreign Affairs to sponsor employees. It’s the first time we had done anything like this,” Daryl Evans said.
“Mayur’s career has developed since joining as a graduate cadet and then learning from the ground up the elements of linemarking and civil works. He has been under the supervision of our department leads, and has grown to be a leading talent in his own right and we are very proud of his work and what he delivers the company and our clients,” Daryl Evans said.
Asking Mayur what has stood out so far in his career, he points to working on the completion and delivery of the M80 upgrade project. More recently, he cites the multi-million dollar project adding popup bike lanes across 28km within existing road infrastructure at Heidelberg, Footscray, and two other council areas. The work is continuing.
Mayur arrived in Australia in 2018 without any other family in Australia to greet him or take him in. He left behind his parents and his sister. His sister joined him a couple of years later to continue her studies in Australia.
Later this year Mayur begins yet another chapter in his life where he returns to India to marry his highschool sweetheart in what he says will be a smaller wedding by Indian standards - 1000 guests.
He will return to Australia in January with his new wife to continue his work tenure at Roadside.
Within three years Mayur will be able to apply for permanent residency in Australia.
The Roadside team congratulates Mayur for his dedication and willingness to be a major contributor to the company, his community and servicing our clients’ needs.
