Shaping our material world

Australia’s top engineers work in a variety of fields influencing others in various ways.

by Dietrich Georg

Advisory panel Our selection process was assisted by an advisory panel of four. They were: Mechanical engineer Martin Thomas, past president of Engineers Australia and former international operations director of Merz Australia, now semiretired.   Chemical engineer Emeritus Professor Rolf Prince, former head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Sydney University and past international president of the British Institution of Chemical Engineers.   Civil engineer Peter Gration, former chief of the Australian Defence Force.   Margot Cairnes, director of corporate transformation and leadership consultant Margot Cairnes International, and regular columnist in Engineers Australia.

In compiling the inaugural list of Australia’s 100 most influential engineers we set out to challenge the often held perception that engineers, while making a major contribution to the wellbeing of society, rarely move into top decision-making positions themselves.

Our list shows that, contrary to this perception, there are many engineers in the senior echelons in a number of areas. Indeed, we had to apply strict criteria to bring the hundreds of names we collected down to 100.

As expected, most of the senior positions in engineering consulting and in the engineering faculties at universities are held by engineers. Perhaps less expected was the large number of engineers being chief executives in industry, particularly in construction. Also, defence seems to have a good number of engineers in its senior ranks.

On the other hand, surprising was the small number of engineers in senior positions in power generation and distribution.

Our first selection criterium was currency, as we didn’t want to create an historic list. We searched for engineers, who are influential at present, either through the position they hold or the work they do. That means engineers who made major contributions in the past are not included. Much of the work of those engineers has already been documented in historical publications.

Secondly we considered the different spheres of influence, from leading large companies and university faculties to designing edifices and products, and from doing research at the forefront of engineering science to political influence and environmental activism. Recognising these different areas we divided the list into six categories, with Industry the largest, followed by Academia/Research, Consulting, Engineering Associations, Defence and Other.

As for citizenship, we decided to include both foreign engineers who currently hold influential positions in Australia and Australian engineers working overseas.

Our final list consists of 37 engineers from industry, 25 from academia/research, 19 from consulting, 8 from engineering associations, 5 from defence and 6 from other areas. The names in each category are listed roughly in alphabetical order depending on the page layout.

Inevitably the selection process contained a subjective element and we don’t imagine everyone will agree with all our choices. But the list shows that there are many influential engineers in a number of fields and that the profession offers great opportunities to its young graduates.

Engineers Australia Magazine, Volume 76 No 6, June 2004.

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