James Ramsey
- Course: MSc Transport Economics
- Year of graduation: 2012
- Nationality: Australian
- Job title: Transport Planner
- Company: Jacobs
I'm a transport planner at Jacobs, which is a global engineering and services consultancy. I provide clients with transport planning consultancy services. I work on transport modelling, planning, and spatial transport economic appraisal, transport data analysis, and statistics.
ITS has helped in my job and career, absolutely, without a doubt. My Masters from ITS was pretty much how I got my first graduate position. It's also given me a passion for transport research and a good understanding of many issues to do with transport.
I looked around for a course that was internationally renowned and ITS was pretty much the standout. I was keen on transport economics (and still am) so I chose that course as it provided me with an analytical framework to work on transport planning and economics. I also studied economics at my undergraduate degree so it was the next natural step.
My advice to students interested in this course and a career in transport and that the course was fantastic. It was challenging, but very worthwhile.
I took part in some of the ITS Employer Visits and I'd recommend attending things like this while at ITS because you have a medium to approach employers. You can't do that under usual circumstances as cold calling is not really done these days and unless you have an insider that can help you contact someone, many employers are unwilling to give out their email addresses easily.
As for the highlight of my career so far, there have been many! A couple of stand-outs would be demand forecasting and a stated preference study for high-speed rail in Malaysia and doing pedestrian modelling for a new underground rail line in Melbourne, Australia.
My advice to ITS international students who are seeking work in the transport sector would be to keep an open mind about working in different places and for smaller consultants or organisations. If you have an employer in mind that you want to work for at the start of you masters, don't shut out other options. You never know where you'll end up really.