Before moving to Australia, Sonam’s days were spent designing gates and working with turbines and shafts on a hydropower project in Bhutan.
Today, the moving parts of his day involve colleagues, customers, suppliers, and contractors, managing OCS colleagues onsite at one of Australia’s largest aviation food suppliers.
The 25-year-old mechanical engineer transitioned into people and systems management in 2026, taking on the role of contract manager for OCS in Brisbane, and says his education is just as relevant.
“I can apply a lot of what I learnt in my Master of Professional Engineering to my role at OCS, and I’ve discovered just how much I enjoy working with people rather than machinery,” Sonam says.
“Machines can get monotonous – people are anything but! As a manager, I get to know their feelings, their emotions, and their day-to-day lives. It’s the part of my job that I enjoy the most.”
Engineering taught Sonam how individual parts contribute to the performance of a wider system. Contract management requires the same breadth of thinking – with people at its heart.
His master’s degree extended beyond technical engineering to include people, human resources, contracts, facilities, and resource management. Sonam now applies that knowledge while managing rosters, recruitment, colleague development, customer relationships, feedback, and service delivery.
He manages a team of 65 full-time, part-time, and casual colleagues, as well as contractors. Sonam ensures every operational period is covered and matches the right people and resources to the customer‘s specific needs.
He understands the reality of working on the frontline, having spent 18 months as a contract cleaner to support his studies at Queensland University of Technology.
When the contract manager role was advertised in 2026, Sonam saw an opportunity to combine his frontline experience with his management education, while further developing his passion for wellbeing and mental health.
Sonam is committed to understanding people without judgement. He continues learning through podcasts and other online learning tools and gets to know colleagues by taking a genuine interest in them.
That curiosity allows him to help people be their best.
“You can never judge someone by how they present themselves. As a manager, you don’t know what’s going through colleagues’ minds. But if you take the time to listen to their stories, you get a much better understanding of what they need,” he says.
Sonam is most proud of the team he’s built since becoming a manager, saying it’s added value to the customer by having the right people in the right roles.
When recruiting, Sonam looks for people he trusts to show up, take responsibility, and motivate themselves. He asks candidates about their career ambitions and discusses the opportunities at OCS.
He helps supervisors to build their capability by inviting them to attend customer meetings, work directly with stakeholders, and experience parts of his role.
“I ask them, ‘Would you be willing to do my role? What skills do you think you need before you could? What do we need to work on?’” he says.
“I give them ownership over their career and the opportunity to challenge themselves.”
Sonam receives trust and support from his manager, as well as encouragement from his partner and parents in Bhutan. That backing has given him confidence in the direction his career is taking.
In his spare time, he manages his local football team, plays badminton, hikes and takes photographs. In the future, he hopes to return to university to pursue a PhD in facilities management.
“I want to be a manager people look up to – someone who helps others and gives back to my people and my community,” he says.
For Sonam, meaningful engineering work now extends beyond machinery to encompass the systems and people that keep a complex operation running smoothly.
