Connecting ideas

About GHD Service line leaders from Australia and New Zealand meeting in Sydney.

Connecting ideas

Collaborating face to face is a catalyst for innovation and forges strong working relationships.

Our highly regarded Technical Conferences program brings together our people from different communities of practice across our connected global network.

These events are an important way of sharing knowledge, evolving our technical services and celebrating the achievements of our people.

During 2017, we hosted more than 300 people at technical conferences around the world, to exchange best practices across our wide range of services. These included:

  • Urbanisation and sustainable cities, September 2016, Auckland, New Zealand
  • Investigate, protect and manage risks & assets for our clients, November 2016, Melbourne, Australia
  • Working together to protect and rejuvenate the natural environment, February 2017, Pasadena, CA, USA (Contamination assessment and remediation, natural resources, aquatic sciences and hydrogeology)
  • Setting new benchmarks for facility and asset performance, June 2017, Sydney, Australia

We also held our first Service Line Leader Forum in Sydney, Australia, welcoming 43 professionals from Australia and New Zealand for two days of learning, collaborating and connecting.

Technical excellence

Many of our people are leaders in their field and hold leadership positions in a variety of professional associations.

Appointments in the past year included:

  • David Sparkes - President of Engineers Australia Newcastle Division
  • Lynn Sorrell - Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW Diversity Committee
  • Peter Hain - Board of the Infrastructure Association of Queensland
  • Phil Harvey - Board of the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois
  • Susan Madden - Chair, Central West Local Land Services, Australia
  • < strong>Victor Tirado - Board of the San Diego Transportation Development Association

Our presentations at industry events reinforce our reputation for technical leadership. For example, we delivered eight presentations at WEFTEC 2017 (USA). At OzWater 2017 (Australia), we achieved the largest participation of any private sector organisation. GHD Advisory’s Richard Fechner was a keynote speaker at the 10th China Project Management Conference, attended by more than 600 delegates.

Not only are our people passionate about advancing professional practice across a broad range of industries, they are also committed to passing on their experience to younger colleagues, including both formal and informal mentoring.

According to our latest People survey, nearly three quarters of respondents agree that GHD provides them with opportunities for learning and professional development and nearly 90 percent agree that GHD is committed to technical excellence in services provided to clients.

Young professionals

GHD’s Young Professionals (YPs) groups around the world are organised by people with fewer than 10 years of professional experience from various disciplines. They provide a platform for peer collaboration and networking, and help people develop skills to advance their careers.

During the year, our YPs held a variety of activities including community volunteering, site visits, networking events and presentations from industry leaders. Many of these events also attracted YPs from our client organisations, building strong working relationships.

In Melbourne, GHD’s Camilla Bachet presented to more than 100 people about her deployment with emergency relief agency RedR Australia in Nepal. As part of WEFTEC in New Orleans, our YPs joined peers from all over North America to build a bioswale that captures stormwater runoff. YPs also attend our Technical Conferences.

Smart Seeds

The Smart Seeds program, led by GHD, is an annual innovation competition for young professionals.

The program brings together bright young minds and experienced mentors from a variety of organisations to develop new solutions to some of the most complex real-world infrastructure challenges. This year, we successfully delivered the program in nine cities across Australia and New Zealand.

We also expanded the program to the UK for the first time this year, and we had 20 participants - five teams of four!

Smart Seeds was highly commended at the prestigious Australian Urban Design Awards 2017 and we have recently partnered with local government and businesses to extend the program into North Queensland, Australia. This project is being co-funded by the Queensland Government through the Advancing Regional Innovation Program. We also secured Australian Government grant funding to pilot Smart Seeds in high schools.

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