Speaker 1 00:00
Leaders don't always need to be the person standing out in front of everybody. I think that
leaders can be very effective in providing support and guidance as well. A long-term
sustainable business needs more than one leader, and so creating opportunities for others is
actually, I think, a great form of leadership in itself. The value of the relationship is always more
important than the the highs and lows of a project, and so our number one goal is to make sure
we're coming out of those projects with stronger relationships intact than we went in, we don't
see the value in bringing the sponge really firmly in the short term because it doesn't suit our
long term view. I think there's maybe sometimes a view that a project starts and there's a
picture of a building and then that then translates very quickly through into into plans and
execution. But the reality is, is that design as a process is best thought of like a it's like a
funnel, and you kind of weave and you get tighter and tighter as you start to look at options.
Some of these early concepts people might see might be very surprising in terms of what
actually ended up being built.
Speaker 2 01:23
Millions of people will pass through major infrastructure and landmark developments every
year without ever thinking about the engineering behind them. Yet, long before the first steel
beam is raised or the first concrete is poured, engineers are helping shape the decisions that
determine whether a project succeeds or fails. I'm Lara Nasserian, and this is CEO behind the
scenes. Today, we're joined by Kevin Berry, Managing Director of TTW Engineers, a firm that
has spent more than 65 years partnering with architects, developers, builders, and project
managers to bring ambitious projects to life. Over 16 years with the business, Kevin has helped
lead TTW through significant growth, whilst navigating technological disruption, workforce
transformation, and the evolving demands of clients. So, what does it take to keep evolving in
an industry that's constantly changing? Let's go behind the scenes. Kevin, welcome to the
show.
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Speaker 1 02:34
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 02:35
Thank you so much for being here. I'm so looking forward to having this conversation with you.
And where I wanted to start was perhaps with a project that many people would recognize.
Because when you're working on something like, let's just say, Atlassian Central, where do you
even begin?
Speaker 1 02:54
I mean, Atlassian Central, like a lot of our other big major projects, has a sort of a common
principle or process in terms of what makes them a successful job. It firstly starts with you
know the client. Clients can be have an inspirational requirement as they do at Atlassian. They
can have a necessity like a major hospital or a client that we have there, and from that point
there, the next steps are really important. So, it's important almost to start slowly when you're
actually building out the concept and development of a project. If you jump too quickly into a
solution, you might actually sort of shoot past the correct answer. So, some of those early steps
are actually looking at all of the parameters and challenges that a project might have it might
be how quickly it needs to be constructed. What are the future provisions that a building might
need to have so that it's able to be used 50, 6070, years into the future? Sustainability is
another thing that's important, and particularly at central is really topical, as well as you know
a lot of the sort of physical challenges around a building. So, a lot of the projects you'll see TTW
do kind of commonly in quite complex environments. They might be over train stations or over
motorways, and so understanding all of these complexities is the first step in actually being
able to sort of to start to understand how you might solve the problem. From there, once
they're established, you can then start to await them, think about how they might interrelate
with each other to develop a solution, and from there you can then start to deploy, you know,
the technical expertise in terms of what you require to deliver a project, and I think, and when
people think about engineering, they probably think about that aspect of doing the calculations
and the the project. But there's a whole lot of preceding work that's incredibly important to
actually enable that work to be focused in the right area, and from from that point. There, then
you can start to actually develop drawings and sketches and models and things which can start
to move through into construction. So that upfront piece of understanding the problem is a
really critical aspect of any project delivery to be successful.
Speaker 2 05:17
And projects like Atlassian Central, the Westgate Tunnel and the IKEA Mosque; these projects
are all vastly different. But what is it that they have in common from an engineering
perspective?
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Speaker 1 05:31
They all ultimately have a specific requirement to do something particular for their client. So,
you know, Atlassian is you know the desire from the client to be a lighthouse project for
sustainability and best practice globally. The Ikan Mosque is the new central spiritual place for
Indonesia. It's a national monument, as such, and so providing engineering to realize that
vision has been something that's been very important to that client, and Westgate Tunnel is
different again. Whilst it's a piece of infrastructure, the main portal shells, which we were
heavily involved with, were really trying to link the piece of horizontal linear infrastructure back
to the environment, and so a lot of the work we had to do there was to understand the
architecture and their vision to actually humanize almost this this large piece of of
infrastructure.
Speaker 2 06:30
What I'm really getting from what you've just shared as well is that it's really starting with the
the end goal in mind and really understanding and asking the right questions to know what this
project is solving for. What are some of those important questions that you're asking your
clients at the beginning of this journey?
Speaker 1 06:49
I mean, some of the questions might be around simple things like what is the the function of
the the building or the the structure that we're that we're creating. How long does it need to to
last? What is the the vision for that? What do they need to achieve from a commercial
standpoint? Like, how much is their budget? What do they want to be able to charge in terms of
rent? And then, what's the legacy for the asset as well? Is it something in the instance of you
know the mosque or a piece of infrastructure that it lasts for 100 years, or is it something that
they think might be a little bit shorter term in terms of the asset?
Speaker 2 07:29
And for someone outside of the industry who may be listening to this, what would surprise
them the most about one of the things, or some of the things that could happen before
construction even begins.
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Speaker 1 07:42
I think there's maybe sometimes a view that you know a project starts and there's a picture of
a building and then that then translates very quickly through into into plans and execution. But
the reality is is that design as a process is best sort of like a it's like a funnel and you kind of
weave, and you get tighter and tighter as you start to look at options. And so, lots of the
solutions or ideas that we might look at might be vastly different in the realized project at the
end. And so, there's a lot of refinement around the parameters to solve a project that actually
result in the thing that they see long term, and so some of these early concepts people might
see might be very surprising in terms of what actually ended up being built, and it's a process
really of testing. So you, if you have all of those rules that you might want to realize a project
to, you test all of these ideas against them, and once you have a good idea, you might refine it
and test it again, and that ultimately allows for that sort of progressive improvement, which is
really what design is. It's a process,
Speaker 2 08:55
progressive improvement and refinement. I I really like the way that you put that. You've said
previously that engineering adds the most value when it helps clients make better decisions,
not better designs. What do you mean by that, and what does that look like in in practice?
Speaker 1 09:15
There are numerous ways to ultimately execute the the technical design of projects, but it's
important to make sure that we're solving the right problem to start, and that might come
down to if we think of sustainability, adaptive reuse is something that is sort of starting to
become more prevalent, and that is a term is where we look at the redeployment of an existing
building, we might refurbish it, we might extend it through, and so if a client has a project, they
might have a building which they might have a an idea that they want to redevelop into a
completely new structure. But rather than just going straight through and giving them a design
for a new building, we start to. Actually, question what they really want, and it might be that
redeploying something or augmenting it might be actually better for their their budgets, for the
speed at which they need the asset to come back online. And so, by asking some high level
questions, that will completely change the type of execution piece that we do, and so a lot of
those upfront steps are invariably more valuable than just the process of the the engineering. I
Speaker 2 10:30
could imagine how managing expectations of clients as well would be a big piece of of your role
and and what you do at TTW. How important are those early conversations in terms of
managing expectations and and perhaps changing expectations through that discovery
process?
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Speaker 1 10:52
They're they're incredibly important, and you know engineering, like many other industries, is is
really is a human based industry, and so it's so important upfront for us to have a really good
empathy and understanding for what the client is probably likely to need. Sometimes it's our
job to actually extract what the real problem is we're trying to solve, and so that comes about
through spending time with our clients, from asking them lots of questions, and then starting to
distill what exactly is the problem that we're trying to address for them. To do that, obviously,
you know, we need our clients to to trust us, to have a rapport with us, and so what we see is
that where that's most successful, that's with you know repeat clients. So when we go through
that journey again and again, you just improve time after time in terms of being able to extract
what those visions for the project are and how we can then contribute through the process of
engineering and building.
Speaker 2 11:55
Sometimes it's about those unspoken conversations too. It's what's not being said and being
able to actually extract that the real desire and intention.
Speaker 1 12:05
Yeah, absolutely, I agree. And you know, whilst different types of clients have different drivers,
some might be very commercial, some might be around public legacy or sustainability. You also
need to overlay that with particular personality traits as well. So you might have you know
people who are interested in precision. You might have people who want to just jump to the
answer. And understanding that nuance overlaid with you know what a a developer might need
against a a public servant is is quite unique.
Speaker 2 12:36
Absolutely, Kevin. You spent well over a decade at TTW, it's 16 years that you've been in the
business, and you've progressed from associate director to now managing director. Looking
back, what was it that first attracted you to the business?
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Speaker 1 12:54
So when I joined TTW, I had spent sort of five or six years working in the UK. I'd been working
on fantastic international projects, really big iconic things, very similar to the sort of ones that
you'd mentioned earlier. And so, what I was looking for was a business where it was able to
access good quality work, but I didn't want to go and work somewhere where I was going to
struggle to make a difference, and so I found TTW through being introduced from one of my
prior colleagues, and that fit seemed really good. It had that nice balance of a sort of smallish
personal business, but you know, within the Sydney market, they were doing really good
quality work, and so that was the thing that ultimately attracted me to join.
Speaker 2 13:42
And I read that one of the defining moments that you had in your career was when you first
stepped into an underperforming office that was at risk of closure. What was it that made you
put your hand up for a challenge like that.
Speaker 1 14:01
Our business has been, you know, it started in Sydney and it had grown out of there probably
for 55 years, and it had some smaller offices dotted around, but they had never fully realized
their potential. And so early in my kind of directorship, one of these opportunities came up, and
there was some challenges within one of our regions. And I took the view that in order for TTW
to develop and expand, we needed to be in this particular market. And so I saw it as being a
reasonable step backwards if we were to sort of you know let that let that business close. And
so from there, I sort of like a project. I went down there. I spent quite a lot of time and tried to
understand what was not working. Then set in place a little bit of a plan around how we would
try and improve that. Businesses always want local and familiar, and so one of the first things I
needed. To do was to find a good local leader, but rather than me coming down and sort of
trying to to lead the business from afar, the important thing to do was to position that that
person so that they were supported, they had the capability of the business behind them, but
they were still seen as a sort of local leader, and so that was relatively successful in terms of
the approach. We we set good structures in place. We were really clear around the type of work
that we wanted to do and the type that we didn't, and we grew that business. You know, it was
a single person when I ended up picking it up, so it was was essentially almost a start again,
and now it's it's sort of one of the largest players in the the market in which it operates. So it's
it's been a really successful thing, and and what it taught me more than just the process of of
building that was was how people see our office from or our business from afar. What's the
intrinsic value, and why do people actually come to TTW? So that was a useful process because
prior to that, there'd probably been a fortunate thing where you know our brand was strong in a
particular market, and so business would generally seek us out, and this required us to do the
opposite. And the reason that it's been quite a sort of important chapter in my career is that it
sort of taught us a little bit of a playbook around how we're going to continue to develop and
grow our business, and so we've redeployed that model a number of times now, and that's
been a pretty key part of how the business has grown over the past five or 10 years.
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Speaker 2 16:36
When you look back at that moment and that experience, what was it that you really learned
about leadership then that you you still uphold today.
Speaker 1 16:46
I think that the key thing there was that leaders don't always need to be the person standing
out in front of everybody. I think that leaders can be very effective in providing support and
guidance as well, and so a long-term sustainable business needs more than one leader, and so
creating opportunities for others is actually, I think, a great form of leadership in itself.
Speaker 2 17:17
And what does that look like today in the way that you lead
Speaker 1 17:21
in reality, it looks it looks like well, it sort of works in the way that I interact with with my teams.
We have you know a great leadership group across the business, and the way in which we
interact is is quite consistent. But it's also there's an informality to it as well, and so I work with
a lot of our leaders, sort of mentor. We provide advice, but we also exchange ideas. Like I'm not
telling people you need to do this or you need to do that. I'm asking sort of leading questions,
trying to draw things out of them, and then I also spend quite a lot of time with the sort of next
level down and the level below that in the business as well, trying to actually you know help
and identify younger leaders to ensure we have some pretty good succession through the
organization. It's also important that you know I have a particular style of leadership, but
there's a number of other great leaders across TTW, and so making sure that people get a
cross section of experience rather than just one particular star.
Speaker 2 18:27
TTW has been around for more than 65 years. What do you think has enabled the company to
continue to evolve and succeed over such a long period of time, where perhaps other firms
may struggle to to do the same.
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Speaker 1 18:47
I think when when we sort of go back to the very beginning of TTW, it was set up in such a way
that succession, the next level of leadership, was was really important, and so you know, in a
lot of our sort of governing business documents, there's some principles around how we want
to operate, how we want the business to pass down through to the next generations of leaders,
which is really implicit in how we run the business today. And so, through having real clarity
around, you know, the fact that the business is going to be engineer-led, and that we need to
be as leaders be bringing through the next generation, that creates a lot more consistency. And
so, it's always been encouraged in you know my time there that you're always looking for you
know someone else to sit in your shoes, eventually helping to develop them to build their own
client base to you know if they see an opportunity to take that specialism themselves. So that's
been one important aspect is around succession. The other part is is around actually the
service you know that we provide. TTW has always been an innovative business. It's brought
technology to Australia that is still used today. So things like post tensioning were brought back
in the in the 60s by TTW. So there's a legacy of of innovation and technical excellence, and so
we sort of couple those things together with you know a deep long term relationship with our
clients to provide hopefully a really high level of service, and by having those few things
working together, what we've been able to do is have this multi generational succession
through the business, but we can actually also map that back through our clients as well. So
our clients have passed their business down from generation to generation of people at TTW,
and so we have these really lovely long-term relationships. So, as we look to the future, rather
than scaling our business through a sort of corporate model, we're trying to you know take this
small business mentality of great service, interpersonal approach, and scaling it across a
broader, bigger business, and so that's the thing which you know is can be challenging at times
to do. But we think that that's the sort of unique part of our business which will push it forward
in the future.
Speaker 2 21:19
And what comes to mind as you're describing that is restraint? Because I think sometimes it's
so easy to think about what success looks like in the short term, but what you're really talking
about is longevity and long-term success in terms of client relationships and projects. What has
been some some ways have you that you've actively thought about that. Do you think that
having that long-term view has enabled you to perhaps forego sometimes those projects or
clients that could look tempting to take on in the short term, but actually may not be correct for
your strategy and values in the long term?
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Speaker 1 21:58
Yeah, most definitely. Like I think we're mindful of the types of clients that we work with, and so
being selective on new clients who are coming in is something that's important to us. But I
think it's also it's also evidenced in the way that we treat our relationships with clients who we
we do work with. Projects will go well. There'll be projects that are challenging sometimes it's
sort of the nature of of life, and we think it's how we respond is a key part of of that as well, and
so we've got a really clear view that the value of the relationship is always more important than
the the highs and lows of a project, and so our number one goal is to make sure we're coming
out of those projects with stronger relationships intact than we went in. Sometimes that
requires additional investment on our behalf to make sure that that occurs. But generally, that
long-term view has always paid greater dividend for us. We don't see the value in wringing the
sponge really firmly in the short term because it doesn't suit our long term view, and we're not
we're not driven by short term returns as an organization. It's really it's a sort of a cadenced
long term trajectory that we're looking for.
Speaker 2 23:15
I really like your perspective on that. What I'm curious to know is in your position of managing
director, how do you think differently about growth today than perhaps earlier on in your
career? The
Speaker 1 23:30
lens of time which I think of it is a lot greater. So, you know, there's a probably a five to 10 year
view of growth now, and whereas you know when I was earlier in my career, the goals were
slightly shorter term. It was more, how can I win this particular project, or or grow my team to a
certain scale, and so in thinking now in a longer term perspective, I've also sort of come to
realize that it's not just a race I run myself to reach the outcome. Whereas, you know, earlier in
my career, it was sort of more around what I was doing particularly, and so working with
various people across the business to then try and align them on what they might need to to do
so that the organization realizes its outcomes in that longer period of time has been quite
interesting. So you're working with a range of people, different skill sets, different personalities,
different individual drivers, and trying to align what they're doing towards a longer term
outcome. So that's actually quite an interesting and sometimes tricky process to work through.
So invariably, actually takes a lot more patience than when you're predominantly responsible
for yourself and can just sort of control the outcome. But it's an enjoyable challenge, and I
always think of building and growing the business like one of these. Complex projects. It's got
lots of variables, lots of personalities, technical issues, compliance things. But it's fun and
fulfilling, and ultimately, the the people side of the growth of the business will always outlive,
you know, the sort of bricks and mortar part to it, and it creates a much greater leveraged
legacy for the business as well.
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Speaker 2 25:23
It's almost the the difference between me versus us, and I think that shows such a wonderful
expansion of leadership as well. Is when you realize it's not just about me; it's about us, and it's
about what where we're collectively going. So it's a really great perspective. One thing I wanted
to talk to you about is culture, because culture is something that can become more difficult to
maintain as organizations continue to grow and scale and expand. How do you preserve what
makes TTW so special whilst continuing to grow.
Speaker 1 26:03
Culture is intrinsically one of the key things that's gotten us to the point where we are, and so
what we try and spend quite a lot of time doing is distilling what are the really valuable aspects
of that which we want to take and scale and double down on as we we go forward into the
future, but one of the the checks that I also kind of put back in front of of our staff and our
business are that there's always going to be aspects of culture that maybe we could do without
and we can improve upon. So rather than assuming everything's rosy all the time. I do think it's
important to sort of challenge both aspects of it, and so what we've done is we've sort of then
you know taken what we think is the really valuable pieces of TTW's identity, and you know we
distill that into you know a few values. So we've spoken around you know the sort of technical
excellence piece, personal touch, making sure that our our clients are feeling like they're
interacting with people rather than post boxes delivering out engineering is is really important.
Collaboration that's incredibly important, and so by focusing on those things when we're
making decisions on it might be a human resource policy or a a training plan. What we're doing
is we're bringing it back to those sort of key aspects, and that in many ways allows us to sort of
scale the business and the culture by, to an extent, systemising an aspect of it. It needs to be
lived, and that also then comes down from from me and the other leaders of the business as
well to make sure that those values are genuine and our staff are actually seeing them in the
way that that we that I behave and the way that everyone else does. So so that's the challenge
and that's how we approach it.
Speaker 2 27:54
Yeah, it's almost like it's so much more than just having values put up on a wall. It's how do we
actually live, breathe, embody these, and put everything that we're doing through the filter
over those values.
Speaker 1 28:07
That's right, and you want everybody to be able to explain those values in their own words. And
if they can do that, then it's probably far more genuine than you know. We sort of joke about a
wooden plaque on a wall with something written up there, like it needs to be lived rather than
sort of just seen.
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Speaker 2 28:25
And that role modeling piece as well that you spoke about, I think, is is really key. If your
leaders aren't living by those values, it becomes very difficult to actually instill or maintain
them.
Speaker 1 28:37
That's exactly right. It's important that you know that people are able to sort of observe, give
feedback around where there's maybe disjoints between the types of behavior that we want
and and some you know sometimes what we might observe.
Speaker 2 28:51
And something that you touched on previously is the fact that you're very passionate about
investing in your people, and TTW has invested heavily in developing future leaders through
programs like Emerging Leaders, Developing Leaders. Why is leadership development such an
important strategic priority for you and for the company? One
Speaker 1 29:15
of the key things that we need to be able to grow is to have great leaders who live and and can
share the values of the organization. So TTW benefits from from that aspect, but we also have
an obligation to our staff to provide them with career development and and opportunity, and so
broadening their horizon is also important. Engineering sort of teaches you predominantly sort
of a lot of vocational skills at university, and you know the value that we really get out of that is
to me it distills down to critical thinking. But what it's always a little bit short on is around all of
the other skill sets that you need. To be able to engage with people, interpersonal skills,
negotiating, a lot of sort of softer skills, which people who are sort of traditionally funneled into
engineering might not necessarily have in spades. So we think that's important to be able to
sort of enable them to grow, to allow us to sort of develop as a business. And you know, if you
sort of extrapolate that a little bit further. So, if you think of the last 1020, years, we've seen
large instances of offshoring, maybe some of the technical work that organizations do in
businesses, and then in the future, we will see AI and other technology start to drive through
that. The process of engineering will probably be affected, like the the doing the calculation
piece. But the leadership, the consulting, the being able to influence an outcome through
maybe some of those upfront conversations that we had, that all becomes incredibly important.
And so, it's important from a workforce perspective that you know our staff are sort of evolving
towards what the future is going to require around around those those skill sets, which might
be quite different from you know the persona of an engineer 1015, 20 years ago.
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Speaker 2 31:17
And speaking about technology, it's transforming almost every industry right now, what
changes are happening in engineering that leaders should be paying attention to?
Speaker 1 31:30
Construction's been historically an incredibly slow adopter of technology, but you know, over
my career, it's been slowly changing. So, some of the productivity improvements through
things like digitized software, CAD, etc. even in my career has sort of inverted ratios between
people drawing and people actually doing the the engineering work, and so I think with AI
particularly, we will see a marked step change in that efficiency improvement piece,
particularly around the production side, so the sort of more repetitious side of of what we do.
But I don't necessarily think that AI is going to be doing the engineering itself. AI as a tool is
actually like computationally, it's very expensive, and engineering is quite rule-based and
process-oriented. So, what we think will happen is that AI will be used to create processes and
automations and workflows to improve the efficiency of the engineering, and there'll be pockets
of AI which are used for development of software and other tools that we we utilize, but the
consulting, the problem solving, the personal interaction piece, we think is going to be pretty
important for some time to come, and so it's getting the the balance right. So we're running a
big tech transformation program at the moment within TTW, but my focus is really clearly it's
on people and it's around people's ability to use and effectively implement technology rather
than just buying a piece of tech kit because I think that that is going to have far more longevity
for the organization than the latest frontier model.
Speaker 2 33:24
It's really so fascinating. I think specifically in your industry, because as that technical and
repetitive work does become more automated, it it does maybe add a different type of value on
some of those other skill sets that you were talking about. How are you thinking about that
balance? How are you navigating that?
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Speaker 1 33:45
I mean, we're thinking a lot around it from a workforce perspective, and so we're looking both
at what's the training development piece that we're working with our engineers on, so that
they're going to be, you know, more effective around more AI-heavy world, so that's one piece.
We're looking at the type of work that we think will evolve, and whilst a lot of people think AI
could be destructive from a you know taking a lot of business function away from them, I think
that there's probably more opportunity that sits there in allowing us to bolt adjacent sectors
and business streams into what we do. We're also sort of thinking about those types of
commercial models that we use. So, whilst people, you know, think of consulting selling time
directly. I mean, in engineering, we carry and sell quite a lot of sort of risk mitigation for our
clients in terms of how we ultimately insure some of their projects. And so, looking back
through, if you can do something more effectively and more quickly, you're still carrying an
inherent risk. And so, we're playing around a little bit with the pricing models, and then we're
also. Starting to think a little bit more around how do we make our revenue streams more
consistent? So some of our services are very, or most of our services currently are very like
project based, but if we can create better recurring forms through more directly supporting
sites, for example, or embedding our teams within our clients' teams, we think that that creates
a little bit more long-term stability as well. So there's a few things that are happening there,
but to me, it's all still fundamentally formed around the workforce and making sure that our
workforce is sort of able to adapt for for what those demands are going to be,
Speaker 2 35:43
and something you mentioned at the start of our conversation was sustainability, and this is
something that's increasingly becoming more of a business imperative rather than a
differentiator. What role do engineers play in helping organizations to meet that challenge,
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Speaker 1 36:04
firstly, when we look at the built environment, which is predominantly the type of things that
we design and build, there's a huge amount of carbon which is embodied within these
structures. So, if we maybe maybe take a step back and we sort of think well, if you have a an
asset and over its its life cycle. So at the moment, most of the carbon that it utilizes is in
operation. It's in lights and AC, and there's a sort of a small a small proportion, maybe you
know 15 or 20% is the upfront carbon. But if you fast forward to sort of 2050, we have a
greening energy grid. We'll have more sustainable power, and so that ratio flips, and so the
embodied carbon is going to become a huge proportion of these assets going forward, and so
that then has quite an imperative on the the work that we do, and so we can advise clients in
the short term around things like material selection, efficiency, and the embodied carbon
impact to the the buildings in which they're they're developing and operating. But there's
probably again more nuance to that. So the the current sort of landscape looks at carbon in
terms of a like for like comparison. So, a standard building might be designed for 50 years, and
so a carbon comparison looks at well, if I use a a more efficient material from a carbon
standpoint, am I better off at the end of 50 years? But that's quite short-sighted. Like we're in a
city at the moment, these buildings which are you know 6070, 100 years old, and so I think the
next evolution is around things like circularity and reuse of components in buildings, and so
when we start to think about circularity, we're thinking about buildings being like temporary
stores of material, and then that material, once that building no longer needs it, is just
deployed for something else rather than having to be recycled, melted down, and used for
something else. And so, engineering, and particularly the type of engineering we do has got an
incredible sort of usage for that, so it starts to then working working towards design designing
for manufacturing and assembly, having good record keeping of the buildings so that the
components can be recycled through. We're doing quite a lot of modular buildings at the
moment that being built around Australia, and so the the thing with those buildings is that
when that demand is no longer there in its particular place, that module can be hooked up to a
crane, dropped down, and put into a new site and given a whole new life. And so we see that
that's going to be the next evolution in sustainability, and there's a huge role to play for
engineers in that space.
Speaker 2 39:02
When you look ahead to the future, and let's just say to the next decade, what industry shifts,
other other than or in addition to what you've just described, do you believe that leaders should
be watching quite closely?
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Speaker 1 39:15
There's clearly the the piece around tech that I think we've we've touched on pretty well. I also
think that there's going to be a sort of continual evolution towards more globalized workforce.
So whilst it's great to sit here in person, more and more of our interactions are happening
virtually in other places in other countries, and so finding almost the best suited person to
serve a need, I think, is going to become something that's more common for our businesses to
do. We're already engaging in work more broadly than just within Australia or Southeast Asia,
and so I suspect there'll be continuation of that.
Speaker 2 39:57
Kevin, I'm curious to know when you think about. TTW's future. What excites you the most? The
Speaker 1 40:04
main thing that excites us is that we feel, for many years, that we've had a really great service,
great product that we could provide our clients, and it was probably not shared overly widely.
And as we've expanded and grown our business, it's been great to be able to sort of broaden
that offering and extent of where we're actually able to provide that. And in doing that, we've
created huge opportunity for a lot of our staff to to develop and grow with the business. And so,
as we look forward to the sort of next five to 10 years, those are the things that are really
interesting for me. The staff and the development of them-they will find the next mosques or
tech centrals of the world in terms of projects, and allow us to sort of continue to develop the
the really interesting work that we've been doing.
Speaker 2 40:59
And when you think about all this incredible work and the projects that you're delivering. What
is the the main impact that you hope to to leave?
Speaker 1 41:08
There's a a societal impact of the work we do. We design buildings for people to to live in, to
enjoy, to to travel through, and so that's one really important aspect that we we leave a legacy
for for everyone to be able to to benefit and and appreciate, and then for our own people, it's
an opportunity for them to grow and develop, which is something that we've sort of really find
exciting and rewarding as leaders.
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Speaker 2 41:39
Kevin here at CEO behind the scenes, we do have a closing tradition with all of our interviews.
We love to wrap up with the same two rapid fire questions. So the first question I wanted to ask
you is: What is one thing that you've changed your mind about recently, and why?
Speaker 1 41:57
One thing that I've changed my mind recently around was when we were looking at future
business development and expansion. I had this view in my head that our business was only
really suited for intense urban environments in wealthy developed countries, and I sort of
wasn't as interested in looking at some of these other markets. But as I've thought more about
that, as technology overlays started to work through, and even what I discussed around
workforce and more globalized resources, I think I wasn't on the spot there. And I think as as
you know, we're looking forward. I think we've got much more openness around the types of
places that we think TTW would be able to provide value, and I think that that's that's good as
it moves beyond you know time labor cost type thing.
Speaker 2 42:52
It's very exciting indeed. And the second question is, what is one thing that you've not changed
your mind about? A belief that's remained constant throughout your leadership journey.
Speaker 1 43:06
Yeah, I mean that that one for me is pretty straightforward. It's it's the the value of of people.
Whilst I know there's lots of noise and and value around tech, people will are still the defining
part of our business, and I can't see that changing into the future,
Speaker 2 43:22
Kevin. It has been such a pleasure and privilege to have this conversation with you today. And
what has really stood out is that engineering far surpasses the you know the structures, the
systems, the technical expertise. It really is about that human element that you have really
touched on. Thank you again for joining us, Kevin, and to our audience. Thank you so much for
listening. If you enjoyed this episode and if you gained value and insights from what Kevin
generously shared with us today, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show, and
also share this with someone in your network who you know would benefit from hearing these
insights, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time on CEO: Behind the
Scenes.