From the CEO

The holidays are right around the corner and in the lead up we are running our campaign across the country to support a mentally healthy industry by asking clients to consider the impact of tenders released over the Christmas/New Year period. We have already received a great response in support from two water authorities, Melbourne Water and Water SA, and Sydney Metro in NSW. We’ve also shared the campaign with the Australian Constructors Association.

Looking after our mental health could not be more important as we come to the end of what’s been an exhausting year for us all and throughout this year, we’ve been adding to the mental health knowledge hub for members. Members can access these essential guides via our website (see COVID-19 briefing notes). We have doubled the number of briefing notes produced this year to not only to help you tackle COVID-19 but also other key issues that impact your business. We could hardly believe it ourselves when we counted them all, we’ve produced 41 briefing notes this year! This includes for the first time client briefings on some of the issues that crop up around the contract negotiating table. We’ve designed these so that you can share them with your clients showing what the industry position is, one of my personal favourites covers the thorny issue of fitness for purpose warranties.

Before the end of the year, we’ll also be publishing our new thought leadership report on the importance of considering the full range of social impacts in infrastructure proposals and outlines some options better consideration of social impacts in business cases. This follows on from our 2019 work on taking an integrated approach to business cases. We are very proud of the level of engagement we’ve had across the country with the infrastructure bodies, most notably Infrastructure Australia who called out our submission to their Audit as one of the most well-constructed and reasoned. Recognition has also been received from the Commonwealth Government congratulating us on our level of engagement and ability to champion the issues that matter on behalf of our members.

It's great to look back and celebrate our achievements, which of course brings me to the fantastic Awards for Excellence – we didn’t let life get in the way of the celebration and with our Roaring ‘20s theme we brought the night in style to you through the power of technology. Thank you to everyone who entered and to all who got into the spirit of the theme, which made the event extra special. A huge congratulations to all the winners. Thank you to our esteemed judges and sponsors for their ongoing support.

On the day of the awards we also held our annual Congress meeting, which brings together the Consult Australia Board and the chairs of all our committees, including FutureNet and our expert roundtables (25 member representatives). Each representative shared their group’s achievements and challenges over the year and looked ahead to what they’d like to focus on over the upcoming year. We explored ideas for membership growth to help us develop a more focused strategy on growing the membership. Finally, we considered a blueprint for the industry, taking a futurefocused approach to consider where we want the industry to be in the next 5 years, which will help shape the focus of our policy and advocacy work. We’ll be sharing this thinking with members early in the New Year.

I hope you enjoy this edition, which celebrates the incredible work of our industry and its contribution to our economy and society – looking forward to lots of exciting entries next year. In the meantime, wishing you all a very happy and well-earned Summer break!.

Nicola Grayson

CEO

Looking after our mental health could not be more important as we come to the end of what’s been an exhausting year for us all and throughout this year, we’ve been adding to the mental health knowledge hub for members.