Matt’s role as Associate Director includes four distinct leadership functions: Market Leadership, Operations Leadership, People Leadership and Project Leadership. In Matt’s Market Leadership capacity he is primarily responsible for the international growth of the AtkinsRéalis Bioresources capability. Included in this international market leadership is the broader remit of growing AtkinsRéalis’ general water market services in key regions. In a domestic context, Matt’s client leadership portfolio includes a number of UK water utilities, specifically focusing on bioresources services, and supporting on bringing broader water services to AtkinsRéalis’ UK clients.Matt’s Operational Leadership function involves ensuring key business targets are achieved in this growing and dynamic team. This function though operational in nature includes a significant portion of tactical and strategic leadership to ensure the performance of the team is sustained and growth is measured and strategically aligned to the needs of the business and broader market conditions.People Leadership and direct line management of six of the UK Bioresources team is also a function of Matt’s leadership role. The team varies in age and experience, from new graduates to established technical leaders. Ensuring each member of the team is developing, motivated and thriving in their role is crucial to success in this role.Matt’s Project Leadership roles vary depending on the specifics of each project, including Project Director, Project Manager, Technical Leader and Advisor. Matt’s flexible style allows him to adapt to each of these unique roles, where his stakeholder engagement skills and rapport with clients are coupled with his people leadership capability and technical knowledge to ensure excellent project outcomes for clients across the globe.

Aurecon is an integrated engineering and advisory consultancy operating in the Australasia region. As Manager Infrastructure Advisory, Matt held both a key operational leadership role within the advisory department, as well as a client leadership role within Aurecon’s water market team.Matt utilised his strong network across the Australian and global water sector to enable collaboration on circular economy projects, drawing on lived experience in successful delivery of circular economy initiatives. Matt’s understanding of the need for consideration of not just the technical, but the commercial and stakeholder engagement elements of these intricate projects requiring the buy-in of multiple key parties was crucial to his success in this role. Matt advised many water utilities, policy makers and regional decision makers on the prudent ways in which they could not only set sustainability goals, but also on how to develop implementation plans that would convert these goals into projects, and ultimately enable a more sustainable future.

Management of the Operations Services department of Barwon Asset Solutions, a Barwon Water subsidiary organisation. Line management and leadership of the multi-skilled operations work teams totalling 50 employees across the entire Barwon Water service region. This position also held accountability for the management of the Master Services Contract with Barwon Water.

Working in Barwon Water’s Infrastructure Transformation team, Matt was responsible for leading the business in the identification, assessment, implementation and embedding of innovative infrastructure transformation opportunities that enhanced productivity and achieved step changes in customer experience, zero waste and zero emissions. Matt advised senior and executive leadership through the critical evaluation and risk profiling of opportunities and business case preparation to ensure the right opportunities were realised. Critical to Matt’s success in the role was his ability to build and maintain effective relationships with key strategic partners within Barwon Water, across the G21 region, and throughout the water sector.

As part of the treatment operations leadership team, this role involved identification, coordination and facilitation of continuous improvement opportunities across all water treatment and water reclamation plants, ensuring high performance across the section in a unified manner. Management of key contracts was also a function of this role, as was management of discrete projects, CAPEX and OPEX budget tracking and forecasting. The role also included management of the Northern Water Reclamation Plant including leading the 4-person team that operated the facility. Matt was able to bring his process expertise to the role, coupled with an aptitude for project and contract management. These technical skills were complimented by Matt’s strong leadership, collaboration and communication skills. Successful execution of the responsibilities of the role were made possible by this combination of Matt’s technical and leadership skills. A significant achievement in this role was Matt’s ability to dramatically transform the teams approach to HSEQ, a deliverable Matt influenced across the operations department as a whole.

This role in a dairy focused consulting firm involved engagement with leading domestic and international dairy manufacturers across the entire project life-cycle, resulting in a diverse range of responsibilities spanning process engineering consulting and project execution and management.Matt led client engagement and investigations to identify optimisation opportunities, developing innovative engineering solutions to improve client operations and deliver commercially viable outcomes. Activities spanned opportunity identification through business case development, resulting in the successful award of projects.Matt was also responsible for execution and management of both continuous improvement and capital projects at client sites, spanning the entire project cycle, from design and moving through budget development, procurement, installation, commissioning, post-commissioning support, project completion and close-out. Successful execution of this role and key projects was made possible by Matt’s careful management of project budgets, timeline and resources along with his strong rapport with key stakeholders.

This role involved working with key clients across the dairy industry, with a strong focus on the identification of process issues as well as potential opportunities, ultimately delivering continuous improvement outcomes.Matt delivered three key projects during his time in this role, including a whey loses investigation at the Bega Cheese Coburg site, as well as undertaking a milk pasteurisation microbiological characterisation project for the same client, at both the Coburg (Vic) and Bega (NSW) sites. Delivery of a clean-in-place (CIP) optimisation project for Murray Goulburn at their Cobram site was pivotal in avoiding quality issues and improving operational efficiency for the client.