What a time! Thousands, millions of words have already been written about this year, and there will continue to be many more . As engineering consultants, our role is to demonstrate our commitment to be your project partner during demanding times.
Taking time to reflect, our team, led by Andrew Fraser share their thoughts:
““Undeniably a challenging period. It is almost hard to look back past the previous several months to a pre-COVID world and remember what that ‘normal’ was. Despite this, it is reassuring to be able to remember what our teams have achieved since July 2019. Celebrating 25 Years, inspiring leadership retreat, amazing projects delivered, our expansion into Audio Visual service, extension of the ESD team and growth into South Australia all balanced with the strength and consistency of our successful East Coast teams.””
National Finance Manager, Nicki Fraser reflected on the period which provided both opportunities and challenges. During the first six months of the financial year, our leadership team identified that increasing our team member numbers across our offices, turnover and diversification of client base were essential to further growth and continued project delivery success. We kicked some great goals prior to the New Year, and while COVID-19 has thrown up complications BSE have not reduced hours worked or salaries and committed to ‘business as usual’ to provide our outstanding service to project partners in short, medium and long term. Balancing this responsibility while caring for the health and safety of our team members has been a priority for the management team. Andrew continues to hold weekly chats with all team members, and the positive and confident attitude our teams have shown a significant contribution to our resilience.
NSW Director, Stuart Johnson shares that our teams worked towards New Year with the usual surge, and commenced the New Year with exciting projects such as Chatswood Education Precinct and Gosford RSL for our Buildings team. While our Interiors team continued strong partnerships across iconic commercial towers, retail partnerships and with a range of inspiring design firms. While COVID-19 impacted large and small projects, we are now seeing a return in the interiors space and some of the larger projects coming off hold. Looking positively to the near future and building on our partnerships to exceed expectations and ensure successful delivery of a diverse range of projects.
Director, Cameron Webb, based in Queensland, has been thrilled that our teams were involved in the revolutionary Midtown Center project in Brisbane CBD, the first of it’s type in Australia, joining 2 existing commercial towers into a single building with generous floor sizes and exceptional amenities. The 20,000sqm fitout for Rio Tinto, delivered an integrated solution leveraging our team’s base building knowledge into the tenancy, allowing both our Buildings team and Interiors team to contribute exceptional project outcomes. Celebrating 7 years of BSE in Queensland, our teams welcomed project partners and clients for an evening occasion.
As our Victorian team also marked an anniversary, Victorian Regional Manager, Iynka Logan highlights that celebrating 5 years with clients and our growing team was a milestone. During this financial year, our team grew by 50% and moved into larger offices. Key projects were delivered with project partners JLL including 10,000sqm for Department of Premier and Cabinet, a new commercial build and integrated fitout completed for Target and residential and mixed use superlots at Martha Cove in construction.
ACT Regional Manager, Brendon Newham, considers this financial year a strong period in Canberra, continued growth of the team and large scale data center delivery are key highlights, plus a plethora of medium to large mixed use residential development and education refurbishments. As with the other offices, ensuring quality of design and maintaining scope delivery during COVID-19 was an adjustment, made with the support of the whole team.
Our newest office in South Australia kicked off operations during the second half of the financial year, led by SA Regional Manager, Tim Mudge. With team member numbers already growing and project delivery well underway at RAAF Edinburgh and SkyCity Casino, BSE are excited about the potential of this new market.
As Andrew and Cameron lead us into the new financial year, their key take-away for our teams and project partners is that as an industry, we still face challenging times with as much capacity as ever for success. Partnerships are vital as ever to maintain the strength and growth of the past decades. Projects continuing to progress in a COVID economy, pipeline investment and quality of design and build can and will drive innovation and recovery.