Allister Maskery was happily working as a civil engineer in New Zealand, when the rail project of a lifetime came calling.
It was the mid-90s, and the Mass Transit Railway Corporation was building a new line to the Hong Kong International Airport. Completed in 1998, the Airport Express carries almost 50,000 passengers a day, at speeds of up to 180km an hour.
As part of the $5 billion project, Allister was based at the new Tsing Yi Station...
Anthony Bayadi has a simple but powerful philosophy – if you don't learn something new every day, you've lost the day.
It’s this mindset that has kept the Aurecon veteran motivated to embrace new challenges 26 years after he first joined the company.
Originally trained as a survey drafter, Anthony has seen the trade transform from the days of hand-drawn models on paper to three-dimensional digital files. He currently heads up the Aurecon digital design team for the Sydenham Station Junction project.
When Bright Pryde looks at a rail station, she immediately thinks in footsteps.
Bright is part of the new Transport Planning team in the Sydney office, which was incorporated into Aurecon’s Infrastructure unit in the middle of 2018.
“I've been helping with the Transport Access Program (TAP), looking at pedestrian flow in train stations. This involves analysing the new station builds and assessing how design changes will impact on pedestrian flow at peak capacity.”
Design manager Claire Doyle understands the importance of addressing user needs when designing new or upgraded train stations.
Will a pram make it on to the platform easily and safely? How about a wheelchair? These questions occupy her thoughts equally during the design phase, and when she’s out and about with her three children – Annabelle (8), Madeleine (6), and train enthusiast Lachlan (4).
Among her current projects, Claire is proud to be contributing to the More Trains More Services and Transport Access Program (TAP).
While visiting Japan, Helen Browne allowed herself a moment to appreciate the benefits of high-speed rail.
“You don't even feel like you're on a train, it's like a plane,” Helen says of the famous shinkansen (bullet train).
“We used our phones to measure the highest speed that the train could go. Every time we would reach around 300 kilometres an hour, we’d get excited. The people around us seemed rather amused.”
James Lennard is happy to embrace the “new normal” of customer-centric design.
“When we're working on passenger rail, everything we do comes back to helping the commuter have a better experience. What this means varies depending on the customer and the specific project involved.
Sometimes it can be easy to become tangled up in technical objectives and requirements of projects, and in the past there hadn't been as significant a focus on the customer.
Kevin Moloney is happy to be the odd one out in a room full of engineers.
He got his start straight in rail as a shunter, before moving on to driving trains in London. Those early experiences have shaped how he’s approached rail infrastructure projects in the 30 years since – whether in the UK, Australia, or Asia.
“You can build the sexiest thing, you can build the most complicated thing, but if it's not going to work in the context of making services safer, more reliable, or more comfortable, it’s pointless,” Kevin says.
A geologist by training, Luisa Ruperto’s mining experience led her to explore the earth from a completely different angle.
“I soon realised that there was more to rocks and soil than just trying to locate where a valuable commodity might be. The engineering perspective interested me, particularly in understanding risk in the design and construct phase.”
Luisa completed a Masters of Science in Geotechnical Engineering and was soon working on rail, roads, bridges and tunnels around NSW.
The most advanced rail system in the world can’t function without a safe and reliable supply of energy. That’s where electrical engineer Renene Windsor comes in.
For over a decade, Renene worked on power stations in Australia, New Caledonia, France, and the United States as an engineer and operations manager. She has put that experience to good use since joining the Energy team at Aurecon in 2010, working on a diverse range of projects including power generation, transmission and distribution, and then more recently in traction power.
Renene says rail poses some unique energy distribution challenges.
Rob Angus has worked on many different projects over the years, but the Sydney Inner West Light Rail Extension was close to home – literally.
For many years, the local community advocated for transforming a disused freight corridor that ran past the end of Rob’s street.
The project was his first foray outside of heavy rail, and proved a memorable one.
Over the past 20 years, Seamus Murphy has had a front-row seat to watch the transformation of the Australian rail sector.
“When I started at Aurecon in 2001, I was part of a team of three. Over time, as industry demands increased, our group grew to about 20 people. Two years ago, I got the chance to become the NSW Rail lead, and we now have more than 100 people working across our rail projects together. It’s been an incredible period of growth.”
A digital-first design approach makes sense to Simon Paterson.
Simon is the Aurecon project manager on the design joint venture delivering the Sydenham Station and Junction Works (SSJ), which he describes as “three projects in one” involving Sydney Trains, Sydney Metro, and Sydney Water.
“This is the first time I've managed a project where every element is being modelled to a high level of detail in 3D, and you’re immediately able to see the benefits of it....
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