Our projects
Driven by a client-service led culture, we connect the knowledge, skill and experience of our people with innovative practices, technical capabilities and robust systems to create lasting community benefits.
Insights from our GM: Client Services
With deep market experience across Europe and North America and having worked in more than 20 countries in a range of senior leadership roles, the energetic Catherine Tobiasinsky shares some of her insights on client service.
“I see a huge opportunity to apply ‘value chain’ acumen by thinking obsessively not just about what our clients want but also to think about what our customers’ customers need (either internal or external), ensure that we understand this, and then deliver the benefits to all the customers in the chain,” Catherine says.
“There is a clear shift in the market currently which reflects a growing desire to work with consultants who can communicate succinctly the disruption in the market and bring that thinking, along with potential solutions back to the client, responding to all buyer types.
“Our Client Services transformation roadmap is already beginning to help re-shape our thinking on critical strategic levers such as: client & market strategies, thought leadership and our pivotal role as a technical authority.”
GHD’s business transformation presents a real and timely opportunity to amplify the voice of our clients and explore new game changing solutions across all markets and services
Client service-led
Client service is a powerful mix of what we do and how we do it. We’re really focused on what it is like for clients to work with us and technically excellent solutions are a must.
The feedback we receive helps us to understand the things we do well and the ways we can improve to become a trusted partner and an industry leader in client service.
As a global and learning organisation, we actively seek out feedback, measure and report on it. The aggregated data below is part of our continuous improvement drive.
Client satisfaction ratings *
Overall performance
GHD delivers projects on budget
GHD is accessible and responsive
GHD is timely
Source: GHD esurveys, FY 17/18
I’ve been working for the City over 20 years and GHD has been one of the best team of professionals I have worked with. Their attention to detail, schedules and client focus has been excellent. - City of Fort Lauderdale Public Works Department, USA
(The regulatory submission) was very well managed. The consultants were perfectionists who went the extra mile to ensure a high quality submission.- Dhofar Power Company, Oman
Investing in big ideas
GHD is accelerating organic growth by encouraging our people around the world to think big; developing new services, products and partnerships that benefit our clients, while creating new revenue streams for the business.
Our approach recognises that, in order to become successful, new opportunities often require initial funding and a risk appetite to try new things.
An example is the launch of the global GHD Digital business, spanning cybersecurity and risk, digital strategy and transformation, smart technology services, digital innovation, and data analytics.
Other initiatives launched in FY2018 include:
- Commercial partnership with a geospatial company to automate land contamination reporting for the property sector
- Development of industry-specific economic benchmarking tools to inform clients’ capital investment decisions
- Strategic recruitment of specialists to expand client service offerings in flood modelling and civil infrastructure, coastal and maritime engineering, power, and operational process redesign
- Pioneering approaches to contain and remediate/remove PFAS contamination in partnership with research organisations and equipment suppliers.
These growth initiatives are contributing to the future success of GHD and, even more importantly, unlocking the creative and entrepreneurial thinking of our people.
Smart Seeds
Powered by GHD with partners, Smart Seeds is a design-led global innovation program focused on complex challenges. What began as an idea to engage GHD’s vacation interns in 2012 has blossomed into a multi-national, cross-discipline program bringing together diverse groups of people to co-create integrated solutions.
In 2018, Smart Seeds broadened its reach delivering school and community programs for the first time in Australia, including participants in North Queensland, Central Australia and the Riverina region of New South Wales. These events provided a forum for local communities to collaborate and develop solutions to their most pressing challenges. In New Zealand, Smart Seeds received the ‘Christian Dahmen Memorial Award’ for Innovation at the New Zealand Human Resources Awards 2018. The award recognised our innovation program for preparing participants for the future of work and driving collaboration with local industry.
Christchurch became the third city to engage in Smart Seeds in New Zealand joining the ranks of popular programs in Auckland and Wellington. Elsewhere, Smart Seeds successfully continued programs in Canberra, Sydney, Perth and London, UK.
To help realise more great ideas from Smart Seeds in 2019, we are excited to expand the program to provide more opportunities for collaboration and prototyping following Showcase Events in each city.