My engineering experience over a 25 year career heavily shapes how I approach technology. I feel that the technology we use should amplify our professional judgement, enhance safety, sustainability and quality, and help our teams deliver better outcomes for our clients. It should never distract from the fundamentals of good engineering. That mindset guides everything I do, from our strategy to the day to day choices made about methods, data, and workflows.
Technology is most valuable when it is rigorous, transparent, and addresses the challenges we face in project delivery. My involvement with the Institution’s activities—including serving as vice chair of the BIM Panel since 2020, acting as a Professional Review Interviewer and being a member of the EDI committee—keeps me close to evolving best practice and the realities and challenges of implementation across our profession. That connection helps ensure that the digital approaches I champion are robust and grounded in the expectations of our people and our clients.
I take a very pragmatic approach to application of technology - start from the outcome we want for clients and communities, then choose a simple, assured digital path to get there. That means being intentional about which tools we adopt and why, continuously optimising the software we rely on, and making it easier for engineers to do excellent work with less friction. It also means measuring the value we achieve in terms of efficiency and quality. AI adoption is part of this picture—but only where it’s done in a responsible way and is tied to real needs, supported by training, and implemented with safeguards that respect confidentiality, safety, and professional ethics.
Looking ahead, my focus is on how we continue to combine strong engineering fundamentals with the best of modern technology so that teams can deliver more productively, let the machine take the weight of the mundane and focus on where our human centric skills can really deliver safer, smarter, and more sustainable projects. That means continuing to refine our toolset, increase our use of data, share our experiences and work with others to advance our industry together.