I was working as a planner at Contour Consultants when I got a phone call from my good friend Colleen Peterson. She said that there were plenty of opportunities at Ratio Consultants to help take the company forward in a directorship role.
My earliest memories as a younger planner were quite some time ago. I was lucky enough to land a job with a firm called Henshall Hansen Associates, a consultancy that very successfully combined the disciplines of planning and economics. They were really ahead of their time and well led by John Henshall and Roz Hansen. I have great memories from that period and the people that worked at that organisation all went on to have very successful careers. I think Henshall Hansen Associates was very fertile ground for good professional development and that is a real credit to Roz and John.
John used to do a lot of retail economics work and part of that involved measuring floor space in various shopping centre locations around Melbourne. So, a big part of my early career was measuring the widths and estimating the depths of shop floor space in a vast number of centres around Melbourne. I also remember my first VCAT hearing – I was up against industry giant Ian Pitt SC and experts Tim Biles and Steve Hunt. The client kept telling me David and Goliath stories. Goliath won.
By the time I arrived here, I was really set on trying to achieve directorship. What kept me at Ratio was the fact that the directorship group was interested in growing, changing, and improving. When I arrived in 2008 there were about 26 people including traffic engineers and town planners. We did a lot of work for local government and objectors. We are now a firm of 90 people and our work is primarily focused on permit applicant-driven work, expert witness work, and appearing at panel hearings. Our client base is fantastic and we have thrived as a firm so I’ve just really enjoyed the journey of evolution to make us a top-tier consultancy.
What are some of the bigger transformations within the organisation that you’ve observed over the years?
The transformation has really been about the service offerings. In 2008, we were predominantly a statutory planning and traffic engineering firm. We are now statutory planning, strategic planning, urban design, transport, waste management, landscape architecture, and circular economy consultancy with offices in Melbourne, Geelong, Sydney, Brisbane, and Tasmania. We also now have a magnificent new office space in Cremorne and are very lucky to serve a strong client base.
I think the project I’m most proud to have worked on is the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School (MITS). This organisation was set up by Ed Tudor, whose parents both came from an education background. The school aims to provide education and schooling at some of the best schools in Victoria and, importantly, provide care for the indigenous students who come from all over Australia to stay at lodgings in Richmond. The pastoral care provided enables the boarders to settle into their new surrounds and helps them overcome homesickness while they are educated at some of Melbourne’s best schools. It is a terrific idea, has been very successful, and made a meaningful difference to indigenous people in this country.
In addition to MITS (above), working on numerous aged care and retirement living projects and gaining approvals for major school projects.
On a lighter note, I also have to mention in my early days at Hansen Partnership when we received approval for the Sphinx in Geelong. It received a bit of media coverage recently and was challenging at the time because, as a young planner, I thought ‘how am I going to argue that this fits with neighbourhood character?’ Fortunately, some more experienced heads told me the neighbourhood character didn’t matter since ‘anything goes.’ This is one of my legacy projects ‒ so proud!
I think my passion has been maintained by embracing change. Change is sometimes really difficult and people are often resistant but, at the end of the day, change keeps things interesting when you work on different projects with a really wide range of people. I love investing in people and, in particular, want to see the younger generation succeed in the planning, transport, and urban design space. I am competitive by nature, and I love problem-solving, so town planning is a really good job when you’re trying to achieve good quality planning outcomes. Keeping clients happy is important so the passion comes from an external source too.
Most of my favourite memories relate to the Culture, Engagement and Wellness committee that we have here at Ratio. We make a big deal out of encouraging people to participate in extracurricular activities. This includes attendance at comedy festivals, sporting events, participation in company Olympics, our end of financial year dinner, our Christmas parties, table tennis tournaments, paella cooking days, and a really wide range of events over many years.
There’s probably nothing worse than a 52-year-old giving advice to the younger generation! I am impressed by the younger professionals because they have a confidence that perhaps we didn’t have 20 to 30 years ago.
At the end of the day, there is no substitute for hard work and commitment. That doesn’t mean working long hours, it just means working hard during business hours and putting your hand up and helping whenever possible. It means being a problem solver rather than a problem finder. In the post-COVID era, I would also strongly recommend maintaining your presence in the office. That might sound like a self-serving suggestion from a CEO but there is absolutely no doubt that collaboration and human interaction is an important part of what we do. A friend of mine who was a managing director of a large transport engineering company once said that consultancy is a ‘contact sport’. There’s nothing like being in the mix when things happen and being available when work is dished out.
