If there’s one habit that’s paid for itself over and over in my career, it’s stepping off the treadmill to reflect. Every time I pause and look back across big jobs – drains, stadiums, rail, city-shaping alliances – the same pattern shows up. Risk isn’t the villain. Fear is just risk dressed in emotion. The moment you make the risk visible and actionable, the fear shrinks and momentum returns.
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Don’t try to paper over uncertainty
I learnt that the hard way as a young civil on a big drainage run through Mount Waverley. We tendered keen, turned up with the excavators, and reality turned up with them: services where the drawings said there weren’t, ground behaving like it hadn’t read the spec, disputes piling up, lawyers circling. The drain still got built, but the only people who “won” were the ones billing by the hour. That job branded one lesson on me – don’t try to paper over uncertainty. Surface it early, put it on the table, and manage it together before anyone fires up a machine.
People sometimes ask if you can contract risk away. I used to wish you could. Then a black swan landed: on a major integrated fit-out the contractor’s parent collapsed mid-stream. No clause in the world could stand the building up by itself. We had to take control, steady the stakeholders, and keep going. Since then I assume at least one nasty surprise per project and I design for it: decision rights defined, fallback paths tested, communications ready. You can assign or share risk, you can carry it, but you can’t magic it out of existence. The job is to put responsibility and control in the same hands and be clear about what happens when the music stops.
That idea shaped how we approached design and delivery through the late 90s and early 2000s with novation and assignment models – getting the people who were going to build the thing to finish the design and own the buildability. Done well, it aligns the incentives beautifully. Done poorly, it drops a risk package on a team that doesn’t understand it. The principle still holds: align accountability with the party best placed to manage the risk, and if a partner starts to struggle, have an adult plan that kicks in quickly.
The MCG, the Commonwealth Games running track and the Boxing Day Test
One of my favourite stories about risk, planning and sheer stubbornness involves the MCG, the Commonwealth Games running track and the Boxing Day Test. The “official” plan at one point was to move the Test to Sydney. To me, that was a one-way door; once you give that up, you don’t get it back. So we refused to accept the premise and asked a different question: how might we have both? We built the Games track early, buried it, played the Test, and then unwrapped the track and delivered the Games. Not with fingers crossed, but with detailed logistics, specialists brought in early, scenario rehearsals and contingency paths we were determined not to need. The payoff wasn’t cleverness; it was trust. When you turn up with evidence and options, people will back you.
Rail taught me to replace “can’t” with “how”. At North Melbourne Station the brief was to keep trains running while rebuilding live platforms. The obvious answer was “close it and come back later.” We did the opposite. We decked over the live tracks, moved materials over passengers, and only narrowed platform widths after we’d tested real passenger flows with barriers and cameras. We storyboarded every construction sequence – literally cartooned them – so everyone could see how the dance would work before a single plate went down. When you show, not just tell, sceptics become collaborators.
That spirit really came alive when we leaned into alliances on Regional Rail Link and then the Level Crossing Removal Program. Owner, operator, designers and contractors around one table, sharing a target, sharing pain and gain, planning as one team. It stripped waste out of procurement and decision-making, let us build long-run capability, and it meant social licence outcomes – apprenticeships, Indigenous participation, diversity targets – weren’t afterthoughts but part of how we defined success. Alliances don’t remove risk; they create the one place where risk is seen, priced and acted on, with everyone owning the consequence.
Culture beats strategy, especially under pressure
Across all of it, culture keeps beating strategy, especially under pressure. The teams that moved mountains shared a few habits. We kept purpose razor-clear so everyone – from comms to signalling to structures – knew the one thing that mattered this week. We killed passenger syndrome by making roles and accountabilities explicit. We made evidence our default setting: prototype the scary bits, film them, time them, bring options not opinions. We made the top five risks visible to everyone, updated weekly, with clear owners and next actions. And we gave ourselves permission to adapt. When conditions changed – COVID being the obvious example – we changed the plan rather than polishing the slide deck.
If you’re wondering how to put that into practice without drowning in process, here’s how I work now. I start with a one-liner: what outcome must exist by a date that matters? If I can’t write that in plain English, we’re not ready. I name the handful of risks that wake me up at three in the morning and I make sure each has a real owner with the levers to influence it – budget, design decisions, supplier relationships – not just a reporting obligation. I prototype the choke points before go-live: the narrow platform, the data migration, the community noise plan. Not a workshop – an actual test. I look for the one big “no” in the system – the person or decision that can kill the idea – and I build the plan that makes “no” safe to become “yes.” Sometimes that’s a buried running track. Sometimes it’s a weekend possession with a filmed proof-of-concept. Sometimes it’s just a frank conversation paired with a credible fallback.
When multiple parties need to behave well together, I try to share upside and downside so the game theory matches the behaviour we want. Pain/gain mechanisms aren’t perfect, but they can line up incentives quickly. And through it all I keep humanity front and centre. Social licence isn’t theatre. Your neighbours, commuters and teams have to live with the outcome. Invite them in early, tell the truth when things change, and ask for their help solving the bits you haven’t cracked yet.
None of this means pretending to be fearless. The nerves you feel before a major occupation or a big decision aren’t a sign you’re reckless or weak; they’re a sign you care.
None of this means pretending to be fearless. The nerves you feel before a major occupation or a big decision aren’t a sign you’re reckless or weak; they’re a sign you care. The work is to turn that energy into something useful by making risk visible, shared and actionable. When you do, the fear gets smaller, the team gets quieter in the best way, and the next step becomes obvious.
If any of this sparks a thought, or you’re staring at a “this can’t be done” constraint and want to kick it around, I’m always up for a coffee and a whiteboard. I’ve got a few more scars than I used to, but that’s probably why I’m optimistic. The hard problems are the most satisfying ones when you tackle them together.