From the CEO

Welcome to 2021! As happy as we are to wave goodbye to 2020, looking back I feel that we can all share in a sense of accomplishment. Toilet rolls aside, Australia handled the rapid transformation from a nation of travellers to a nation that embraced a new way of connecting and working remarkably well. The strong sense of social responsibility was an essential element in Australia’s ability to manage the spread of the pandemic.

Across the Consult Australia membership, we saw a greater focus than ever before on mental health and flexible working. Whilst activity and discussion was happening before the pandemic, suddenly every single one of us faced uncertainty and change to a greater or lesser extent. We all experienced pressure and challenge. No longer was stress and anxiety something that happens to someone else, it was happening to us all. One of the best things to come from this experience is that we’ve learnt to create a safe space for people to share what’s happening outside work and provide appropriate support. We’ve also reassessed the amount of business travel being undertaken, noting the costs to business, the environment, our families, and ourselves.

At Consult Australia we’ve learnt the value of providing you access to a fantastic range of speakers and content online. I know that many of you are looking forward to a return to face-to-face events and networking opportunities, and over the next few months, we’ll be bringing back face to face event options (subject to any further disruptions). But noting the positive feedback we’ve received about our online delivery and the convenience of not having to travel to venues we’ll continue to offer online content.

How have you transformed over the last year? Forgive me for speculating, but I daresay that transformation may not be done yet. So, to help you in this edition, Professor Danny Samson sets out examples of organisational transformation in his article and discusses BHP’s experience and the scale of the opportunity. Management for Design explores the essential elements of setting up a great business system, a key part of successfully implementing change.

Kevin Pascoe at Laguardia PCD highlights in his article the opportunity to transform contracting behaviours in Australia with the introduction of the NEC®4 contract suite tailored for use on Australian construction projects. This has the potential to provide the right contract scaffolding to support greater collaboration and less disputation, which is so sorely needed for a multitude of good reasons.

Ovarro’s Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Hawkridge, explores the theme of transformation from the perspective of emission reductions across our cities and the role of RTU’s in capturing data to measure, monitor, and control asset performance. Lucy Griffin and Ben McGarry from Aurecon also consider Australia’s transition to a netzero economy and how this could lead to a transformation of our approach to sound and acoustics in design.

I’d like to thank all of you for participating in this year’s Leaders Conference (which we’ll cover in the next edition of Consulting Matters) and for joining our International Women’s Day (IWD) event. This year’s IWD theme was Choose to Challenge. Georgie Dent writer and advocate for gender equality and families, and executive director of The Parenthood, reminded us that in Australia many of us have the privilege of being able to choose to challenge, while so many others do not. So, let’s make that choice to challenge the status quo to transform into a kinder, fairer, and safer society.

At Consult Australia we’ve learnt the value of providing you access to a fantastic range of speakers and content online. I know that many of you are looking forward to a return to face-toface events and networking opportunities, and over the next few months, we’ll be bringing back face to face event options (subject to any further disruptions).

Nicola Grayson

CEO