Engineers must work with other professions for infrastructure to 'thrive'

A diversity of skills is needed for design teams to "thrive", according to Expedition Engineering director Judith Sykes.

During an ICE Strategy Session, Sykes cited a variety of perspectives as one of the key conditions to create an environment in which teams can maximise potential.

“Within infrastructure delivery we need a range of disciplines – so civil engineers, landscape architects, materials scientists, manufacturers, end users,” she said.

“They all contribute right from the development of the brief through the design and construction process. We should be more confident in recognising what we don’t know and when we need to bring in different skills and expertise in to help us.”

Sykes also emphasised the need to view design as an “iterative process” with “nested sub-processes at each stage”.

She said that an understanding among programme leads of how different design disciplines navigate this process will help “unlock value”, for example through capital cost saving, better biodiversity gain or more integrated place making approaches.

“The reason we need that iterative approach is because we are often navigating multiple and sometimes competing objectives. So we need to work our way through this balancing act to converge on the best solution to deliver multiple benefits,” she added.

Good communication, engaging communities and investing early in design strategy were among other features of effective design teams.

“As you go through the project delivery it becomes far more costly to embed changes so investing resources in early stage brief development is really important,” Sykes said. “Not doing so results in missed opportunities, sub-optimal outcomes and, at worst case, aborted work.”

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