Anthony Barry has been the managing director group operations of
Connell Wagner since June 2007, following the retirement of Robert Squire. The company is one of Asia Pacific’s largest consulting practices providing services in a wide range of areas. It has a staff of 3500 and its current annual revenue is about $500 million.
The company has been growing strongly. It now has offices in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. It has established a design centre in India to support the growing demand for skills around the globe.
Connell Wagner also has ongoing alliances with Mott MacDonald in Britain and Hatch in Canada through the jointly owned companies Mott Connell operating in Hong Kong and China, and Connell Hatch.
Barry was president of the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia between 2005 and 2007 and will complete his term as a director in 2008. He is a councillor of Standards Australia and on the CRC for Construction Innovation’s Task Force for Dispute Avoidance and Resolution.
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Under Andrew Buckley’s leadership as managing director, the Cardno group keeps growing at a fast pace. The company, which is one of Australia’s few publicly listed engineering consulting firms, announced another record profit for the half year ending 31 December 2007. The company estimates revenue for the current financial year ending this month to be more than $400 million and staff numbers stand at around 2900 worldwide. It has 69 offices throughout the world including in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Belgium and the US.
Cardno has been growing in recent years mainly through acquisitions, with the latest purchases being UK based water engineering software company Micro Drainage in March and Australian firm Bowler Geotechnical in February. Late last year the company raised $65 million through share placement, with these funds being used to maintain its acquisition strategy.
Cardno has been working on the Gateway Bridge Duplication in Brisbane and is currently involved in several international projects such as a US$71million Road Corridor Improvement Project in Tajikistan and the development of Omran, a low-cost accommodation project for 60,000 foreign workers in Dubai.
Buckley sees the positive conditions for the infrastructure services areas of the business to continue for some years.
He has an honours degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Queensland.
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Peter Busbridge is the chief executive officer and a director of parent company SMEC Holdings and the chief executive officer of SMEC Operations. He has been involved in the management, development and operations of many of SMEC’s business units for the past 15 years.
SMEC has some 3000 staff with offices throughout Australia and in 21 other countries around the world, generating some $220 million in annual revenue . Around 50% of this is contributed by the company’s international network of 20 subsidiaries.
Busbridge said the company’s current strategic plan targets continued double digit growth over the next three years, which is expected to come mainly from organic growth and several targeted acquisitions.
SMEC has completed projects in more than 80 countries, with the largest one at present being the project management of the new US$30 billion Kuwait University. Other major jobs include sustainable power projects in Nepal, India, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia.

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Under Dr Robert Care’s leadership since 2004, Arup Australasia has trebled its revenue and almost doubled its staff numbers to about 1300 at present. The company’s growth has been entirely organic without mergers or acquisitions.
Care is also on the Arup Group Board, which leads the international company with its almost 10,000 staff working in 86 offices in 37 countries.
Care was instrumental in successfully implementing the company’s Balanced Scorecard, which documents its performance against best practice criteria for sustainable engineering and social responsibility, in line with the company’s value statement. Under his leadership, Arup has continued as a major sponsor of RedR Australia, a humanitarian organisation that supplies engineers to disaster areas, as well as the Indigenous Australian Engineering Summer School run by the University of NSW. Care is a director of RedR Australia.
Care is also a director of the Australian Construction Industry Forum, where he has been focusing on safety productivity indicators to measure industry performance. As adjunct professor at UNSW and a member of the university’s Industry Advisory Committee, he has been involved in improving the depth and quality of the profession through education.

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Paul Dougas has led SKM since 1996. Since then the company, which is wholly owned by staff, has grown into one of the world’s largest engineering consultancies. Extrapolating the pace of its recent growth, the company will exceed revenues of $1 billion this year. Its staff number currently stands at more than 6700 worldwide.
At this rate of growth, the company would achieve its goal of becoming a global Top-10 design firm, as measured by US magazine Engineering News Record, within the next five years, Dougas said.
SKM has 47 offices across Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia, and it operates in seven broad markets covering building, defence, power, transport, mining, water and international development. Dougas has been championing causes such as environment, safety, diversity of the workforce, youth employment and other social and community issues. He intends to retain the company’s culture, employee-ownership and independence.
Dougas has a chemical/process engineering degree from the University of Melbourne and a master from the University of NSW and has studied business at Stanford and Harvard
Universities.

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Colin Elliott is the vice-president for the Asia-Pacific region of KBR’s Government and Infrastructure Division.
KBR employs almost 2000 people in the Asia Pacific region and 50,000 globally. The company provides engineering services in areas including transport, water, minerals, maritime, industrial and defence.
In the past two years KBR has seen significant growth in civil infrastructure and capitalised on the Australian resources boom to export its minerals infrastructure expertise offshore.
Internally Elliott has restructured the business to gain consistency in roles and responsibilities across state and industry sectors, and strengthened technical career paths to match those in project management.
Externally Elliott has been leading KBR into alliances on significant infrastructure projects such as the $1.1 billion Southern Regional Water Pipeline, which is a major part of the Queensland government’s drought contingency strategy. The project recently won the Contractor Excellence category in the 2008 National Infrastructure Awards.
Outside work Elliott pursues his passion for fishing.

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Coffey International is one of the top 300 companies on the Australian Stock Exchange. The company now has about 4000 people working on projects in more than 80 countries. It has 15 subsidiary companies and permanent offices throughout Oceania, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.
In the half-year to 31 December 2007 the company reported record revenue of nearly $240 million, which extrapolates to a reportable revenue approaching $500 million for the 2007/08 financial year. Under the leadership of Roger Olds the company has grown both through acquisitions and organically. Its latest acquisition was Canadian geotechnical firm Shaheen &Peaker and its subsidiary companies S&P Geo Engineering and Geo Canada earlier this year.
Olds said the company has implemented a Platform for Growth to guide it in its further expansion both locally and offshore. The Platform is “an organisational transformation project that will prepare us to be a company with global reach while maintaining our local service focus,” he said.
His activities outside work include spending time with his family – three kids and one grandson – as well as tennis and gardening.

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Nigel Robinson heads AECOM group operations across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, known as Maunsell, as well as those in the Middle East. His relocation from Australia to Dubai last year demonstrates the significance of that region to the organisation. In fact in the past 12 months the Middle East business has grown by over 50%.
A major breakthrough for the company in the Middle East came last year when it merged with Canadian consultant Cansult. Its largest project at present in the United Arab Emirates is its contribution to the US$18 billion Al Raha development outside Abu Dhabi.
Robinson’s area of responsibility covers some 6,000 staff generating revenue of $600 million.
A major focus for AECOM in the coming year will be completing the acquisition of Earth Tech, which will expand the Australian business and lift the company’s staff numbers to over 40,000.

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Clive Weeks has been the chairman of GHD since 2004 and a director since 1992. Under his leadership the company has grown into an international player with more than 6000 employees. The company’s annual revenue currently stands at over $800 million.
The company’s growth has mainly been organically but has included some significant acquisitions, the latest this year being Hassall & Associates.
Some of the company’s more prestigious projects in the past year have been in the United Arab Emirates, where it has been involved in the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building, and the Palm Jumeira, the huge now well-known palm-shaped development on reclaimed land off the coast of Dubai.
Internally the company has been changing its reporting system by developing its annual review into a corporate sustainability report. It has also established an Innovation Pipeline that captures, reviews and then develops the best novel ideas from staff.

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David Williamson has been the managing director of URS Asia Pacific since the beginning of this year. The company is part of the global URS Corporation, with over 50,000 staff and annual US$9 billion annual revenue.
“URS has around 1500 staff in Australia and New Zealand. The firm’s expertise within Australia has primarily been within the environmental area, but this is now quickly expanding into main project engineering work across all facets of infrastructure,” Williamson said. One of the most challenging tasks at present is “linking the international resource base we have available to meet the insatiable demand in Australia”.
Originally from New Zealand, Williamson spent most of his career with construction contractors and he joined URS from Downer EDI.
Outside work, he likes boating, bush walking and “tackling the jungle of my inner city native back garden”.

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