Across South East Queensland, plans for new and refurbished venues, precincts and supporting infrastructure are taking shape ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Effective risk management and governance will be fundamental to delivering projects of this scale.

For Northrop Board Director and Specialist Services Lead Ian McDaid, governance is only one part of the picture. After more than 25 years delivering complex projects, he believes the key to mitigating risk and ensuring successful project delivery is having the right people involved from the start.

“The best projects are the ones with solid teams. Working with good people, you’ll get stuck into a job and know where you’re going,” says Ian.

Reflecting on his career, Ian says the projects he remembers most fondly are those where experienced teams communicated openly and worked collaboratively. These teams extend well beyond engineering colleagues. Architects, builders, project managers, specialist consultants and clients all play a key role. The strongest project teams are those where people are prepared to communicate openly, raise issues early and work towards a solution together.

“As consulting engineers, a big part of what we do is manage other people’s risk. Most of the time, the best work goes unnoticed; issues are identified early, solved before they become problems, and the project moves forward,” states Ian.

PHIVE in Parramatta is one such example. The award-winning civic building required close coordination between multiple disciplines throughout design and construction. While the project presented significant technical and construction challenges, Ian credits the close working relationship between the consultant and construction teams with helping resolve issues before they became larger problems.

“A lot of planning went into it, and we were very close to the builder’s team early on. For a project that complex, I can’t recall any major issues. We brought quite a few different people into the project from Northrop with different areas of expertise. It was really well managed, and the people delivering it were on top of the issues, but they weren’t alone in managing them.”

Looking back, Ian says the projects that proved more difficult often shared a similar characteristic: the project team wasn’t as closely aligned, and there wasn’t the same confidence to raise issues early.

“I’d say 95 per cent of problems are communication and not technical. When you don’t have the alignment and trust with your client or your builder, those are the projects that go a little further off the rails before you can bring them back in. Where we’re closer, we get in front of problems early and bring everyone to the table. If you have strong relationships, it’s much easier to manage risk.”

Strong communication is only one part of effective risk management Ian believes specialist experience plays an important role in how risks are identified and managed.

He points to Northrop’s heritage team as an example. Working on projects such as the adaptive reuse of Sydney’s Department of Lands Building, now home to Capella Sydney, requires engineers with specialist heritage expertise who can recognise potential issues early, understand the implications of different interventions, and know how to work alongside architects, heritage consultants and contractors.

“What we’ve learned is that, working with a specialist team rather than generalist engineers, they’ve got so much experience in this space they can see the problems ahead of them. They’re able to intercept them before they become an issue and deal with them very quickly,” states Ian.

The same principle, he says, applies across projects of every scale – “Having the right people on the right project with the right experience allows you to shortcut problems and issues for your client and the rest of the team.”

Beyond the projects, Brisbane 2032 presents an opportunity to develop the next generation of engineering leaders. Major projects create opportunities for emerging practitioners to work alongside experienced specialists, building the technical expertise, judgement and confidence that only comes from contributing to complex project delivery.

“There is a real opportunity for skills and knowledge transfer to the next generation. We’re actively making sure people from across the business get opportunities to work on these projects,” says Ian.

Engineers, architects, builders, project managers and consultants who deliver major projects together develop a shared understanding of each discipline, how to communicate effectively and how to solve problems collaboratively. Those relationships often continue throughout their careers, strengthening collaboration across future projects.

“The whole industry will be working together. Engineers, project managers, builders and a whole bunch of people in their formative years are going to grow together. Those relationships will be very strong because they’ve all been doing something pretty awesome together,” says Ian.

The venues and infrastructure delivered for Brisbane 2032 will leave a lasting physical legacy. These projects will shape the next generation of engineering leaders, strengthen collaboration across the industry and reinforce the same principle that has guided his career: managing risk starts with people.