Andrew is the CEO of Natural Hazards Research Australia. He works with government, business and not-for-profits to make our communities safer and more resilient.

Andrew has more than 20 years disaster management experience, including in senior executive roles. He previously held the position of Deputy Chief Officer / Director Emergency Management and Communication with the Victoria State Emergency Service and, before joining Natural Hazards Research Australia was a General Manager at Risk Frontiers.

Andrew holds Masters (Hons) of Science and Bachelor of Economics degrees and has published in leading international journals.

Presentation: Be ahead of ready: tackling challenges and harnessing opportunities in the face of natural hazards

Jessica is a seasoned chief audit executive with extensive global experience leading internal audit, risk management and governance functions across industries, including infrastructure, utilities and gas. 

Currently the General Manager of Internal Audit at APA Group, Jessica has worked with executives, boards and regulators worldwide, including presenting at Royal Commissions. 

Jessica is passionate about the role of risk and assurance in supporting the achievement of strategic objectives and navigating change.

Assuring tomorrow: Evolving assurance to navigate the complexities of infrastructure projects in the energy transition

Sirish is Head of Estimating and Benchmarking at the Infrastructure and Project Authority in UK Government. Previous to this he was at National Highways as a Commercial Intelligence Manager and Estimating Manager, with experience in cost estimating & modelling, risk and uncertainty management and project controls. He has held various positions in Rolls-Royce as a Programme Manager on implementing Single Source Contract Regulations (SSCR), an Estimating Specialist, Supportability Engineering Manager and Whole Life Cost Engineer. He is currently developing intelligence reporting using historical data and introducing a career learning journey for the estimating profession.

Sirish Co-Chairs PsACE (Public Sector Advisory Community for Estimating), a group with 40 UK government departments and arms length bodies and development of a new Estimating British Standard.

Using his current role, experience and network, Sirish aspires to introduce consistency in estimates across government projects and improved benchmarking to achieve better value for money and project outcomes.

Mike spent eight years in Saudi Arabia, two years as Head of Project Risk for NEOM, one year as Head of Portfolio Management and Governance Excellence, two years with Khatib and Alami and three with Bechtel as Director of Professional Excellence on KSA major projects. 

Mike also spent 17 years as the Managing Director of Risk Solutions, a UK-based consultancy, where he led all the transport and infrastructure sector work, and has 15 years in the nuclear industry.

Mike was a non-executive director of the UK Major Projects Association for more than 10 years. He was a founding member of the North West and Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain regional groups of the Institute of Risk Management.

Presentation: There and back again: a journey through 40 years of risk management

Ben Ryan is the Executive Project Director for Metro Tunnel Project (formerly Rail Projects Victoria). The Metro Tunnel Project consists of twin 9km long tunnels and five new stations at Arden, Parkville, State Library, Town Hall and Anzac. When it opens, it will be the biggest change to Victoria’s rail network since the opening of the City Loop in 1981.

With over 20 years’ experience in project management, Ben has been involved in many significant rail projects within Victoria. He brings deep knowledge of engineering and rail construction management with a collaborative, authentic and transparent leadership approach.

Prior to leading the Metro Tunnel Project, Ben was responsible for the development of the Melbourne Airport Rail project. Before joining Rail Projects Victoria, he held senior leadership roles with John Holland on some of the most complex level crossing removals across Melbourne as part of the Level Crossing Removal Project, including level crossing removals on the Belgrave, Frankston, Craigieburn, Upfield and Mernda lines. Earlier in his career, he also spent time in the engineering consultancy sector, with a focus on the design of road and rail projects.

Presentation: Metro Tunnel’s “one team” approach to managing risk

Joshua has been a senior Executive with Sydney Metro, Australia’s largest public transport infrastructure program, for the past 10 years. His Executive roles have included Head of Project Delivery & Technical Services, which included responsibility for all four Metro megaprojects during the final delivery & commissioning of City-section, and the planning & commencement of the brownfield conversion of Southwest. Prior to this, Joshua led the Capital Portfolio Strategy & Assurance team, and the Program Management Office – a team of over 320 cost, schedule, risk, and digital engineering resources across all Metro projects.

Joshua retired from the Royal Australian Navy in 2015, following service in a range of national and international headquarters strategy and planning leadership roles. He holds postgraduate degrees in Theology, International Relations, and Public Administration, and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

With more than 29 years in the power and energy industry Asif has led the delivery of large transmission projects including detailed design up to 500kV. He has direct experience in delivery models such as D&C, EPC and Owners Engineer.

Asif has led international working groups on power network ‘resilience’ to address challenges in overhead line design, operations and maintenance and wider asset management strategies under extreme weather events for new and ageing assets to improve safety and reliability. Asif has authored transmission line specifications, feasibility studies/tender designs, involved in supply chain management including steel manufacturers and factory acceptance testing across the Globe. 

Asif is a coach and mentor of the next generation of transmission line engineers, including university students, with his involvement with RMIT in 2022. 

Asif is the Chair for the Australian Overhead Lines Panel with the Council of Large Electric Systems (CIGRE, Australia).

Presentation: Risk management of overhead line networks: A model for identification, evaluation and mitigation of operational risks under extreme events

As the Head of the APAC Climate Resilience and Sustainability Team, Nicolette assists customers both nationally and globally. Her role involves helping businesses understand the physical impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. 

Nicolette provides guidance on climate adaptation and resilience measures to protect businesses, people, processes and infrastructure.

Presentation: Climate resilience in infrastructure

Dr Anne Gibbs is an executive engineering management professional with a strong focus on infrastructure management to enhance community quality of life. Anne has extensive international experience, having worked with a diverse range of communities in both developing and developed countries. Her projects have spanned aging water and waste assets, transport and social infrastructure across nations like the UK, Denmark and Russia. 

Anne has also managed the transition of a water authority in Argentina, handled municipal engineering for both remote and urban communities across Australia and undertaken humanitarian engineering assignments in Tanzanian refugee camps, as a responder to an Indonesian earthquake, and for capacity building in East Timor municipalities. Additionally, Anne provided her expertise as a Disaster Resilient Infrastructure Project Expert to the UN CDRI Secretariat. 

Anne holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, a Graduate Diploma in Municipal Engineering and Management, a Masters in Business Administration and a Doctorate in Business Administration.

Presentation: Turning risk into opportunities for resilient infrastructure using asset management

Andrew leads GHD Advisory’s practice in critical infrastructure and national security. He delivers strategic technical policy advice, business case and critical infrastructure security advice projects requiring complex engagement across multiple levels of government, utilities and with the private sector. 

His experience extends across vulnerability assessments of the energy and water sectors, business cases and advice on specialist federal government infrastructure, diplomatic property and secure buildings, the development of sovereign capability, supply chain resilience, maritime security and the security of critical infrastructure. 

Andrew has a special interest in supply chain resilience, has lectured at the National Security College of the Australian National University in Canberra, and has addressed major conferences. He is passionate about making society more resilient by translating what may appear to be existential hazards into clear threats with practical mitigations.

Presentation: What makes a resilient society: how national security depends on community resilience

Benita Husband is CPB Contractors Engineering Director for Victorian and Tasmania, the Australasian construction company of the CIMIC Group and the largest contractor in Australia, which designs and builds major infrastructure across all key sectors including roads, rail, tunnelling, resources, water and renewables.

In this role Benita is responsible for the engineering, digital and quality outputs of CPB Contractors projects across the project lifecycle, from business development and tendering to completion.

Benita is passionate about building industry and government partnerships that will accelerate skills and development training and is particularly focused on upskilling and reskilling women interested in a career in transport construction.

Benita has more than 20 years’ experience in the construction and engineering sector as an electrical engineer, project director and technical advisor. Benita is recognised for her engaging leadership style, and passion for the built environment. She is a registered professional engineer, EngExec and Fellow of Engineers Australia. She’s also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an alumnus of Melbourne Business School Executive MBA.

Presentation: Transitioning skills from transport to energy infrastructure

Suzie is the General Manager of Renewable Gas at Jemena. She is responsible for leading and delivering Jemena’s Renewable Gas Strategy and driving the establishment and growth of a renewable gas market to provide an alternative decarbonisation pathway for consumers.

Suzie has spent the last 25 years working across the energy sector, with in depth experience in strategy, sustainability and renewables. She holds a double degree in Commerce (Finance) and Science (Mathematics) from the University of Melbourne. 

Suzie is an experienced strategic planning specialist and operational manager, highly regarded for her passionate and collaborative approach to driving effective and impactful change.

Presentation: Mitigating climate risk through renewable gas

Luisa Jayme is a Technical Director in Risk and Assurance with Mott MacDonald, with a background in chemical engineering and chemistry. Her more than 20 years of professional experience has been spent entirely in technical risk management and engineering. 

Her speciality resides in translating the abstract concepts of risk into design and using these as part of the reasonably practicable defences in facility safety cases. Her application of risk engineering and technical risk management has spanned sectors that include chemical, mining, water, transport and energy.

Luisa is also an avid amateur native terrestrial orchid enthusiast and a keen karaoke singer.

Presentation: Design optioneering in major infrastructure projects – how safe is safe enough

As the CEO & Co-Founder of fr&nk Capability Leaders, Naomi specialises in building capability and optimising how organisations approach health, safety and leadership.
With over 20 years of experience delivering strategic advice to national/global companies, governments, boards and business leaders, she has positioned herself as a trusted advisor and industry thought leader. As the immediate past Chair of the Australian Institute of Health & Safety and an Expert Member of Queensland’s WHS Board, Naomi continues to influence national conversations on leadership, regulation and wellbeing at work.

Presentation: Psychosocial – a people problem or critical risk?

Trish is a world-renowned award-winning process safety keynote speaker challenging the status quo in process safety leadership. She connects with organisations to improve their process safety capability and outcomes. This is because people have a right to stay safe at work.

Presentation: Seeing the invisible hazard

Jane MacMaster is a systems engineer who has worked for the last 30 years across the private, public and higher education sectors. She is currently the Global Engineering Integrity Director for Babcock International Group, a multinational Defence and Aviation company, where she leads engineering integrity governance and assurance across nuclear, marine, land, aviation and mission systems in the UK, Australasia, Canada, South Africa and France.

Prior to joining Babcock she was Chief Engineer at Engineers Australia. Her previous roles include Founder and Director of Ponder Enterprises which provided educational and advisory services to all levels of government and the university sector in complex problem solving; senior advisor within the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; various roles at Defence industry multinational BAE Systems and management consultant in the institutional banking sector.

Her interest areas complex problem solving and the performance of complex systems. She advocates for high standards of engineering practice, climate change initiatives, women in engineering, lifting standards of maths education in Australia and encouraging more young people to consider further study and a career in engineering.

Presentation: Technical risk – a lense for successful delivery of engineering work

Pela (Pelagia) has been in Infrastructure for more than 35 years in the private and public sectors. She has held bold, transformational executive roles in engineering, infrastructure, asset management and project management. 

She is a trusted advisor to CEOs, executive teams and boards of directors on development, project planning and infrastructure design, project controls, portfolio and programme management and project delivery. 

Pela has an unwavering commitment to innovation and continuous improvement. She has significant commercial experience particularly in infrastructure and the defence sectors and provides advice to government and the private sectors. 

Pela is an executive consultant in project, programme and portfolio management including project management and projects controls. She is a member of our Defence Forces, holding the rank of Lieutenant Commander and her current Reserve role is the Deputy Director of Navy Infrastructure. 

Pela is a member of a number of public and private boards and provides her expertise in infrastructure, project management and defence.

Panel: Major infrastructure and capital projects
Panel: Digital technologies and innovations 

Andrew is a seasoned project director and chartered mechanical engineer with more than 17 years of experience across industries such as oil and gas, mining, infrastructure and chemical processing. 

In his current role at Invest Victoria, the Victorian Government’s premier international investment attraction agency, Andrew supports the development of projects in emerging industries and advises the government on the risks associated with potential investment opportunities.

With a background in capital project management and risk-based decision-making, Andrew is adept at navigating the complexities of large-scale infrastructure and industrial projects. He has extensive experience in risk management across all facets of project delivery and in the operation and strategic optimisation of assets in hazardous industries.

Andrew holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and a BComm in Finance from Monash University.

Presentation: Systemic risk considerations for novel industrial startups

Tom is a Chartered Professional Civil Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Australia, holding a master’s degree in engineering project management. With more than 20 years of experience developing and delivering rail infrastructure projects, his expertise spans project management, project engineering, quality assurance, risk management and construction delivery. This diverse skill set has been honed through roles in the construction industry, public sector and consulting profession.

Tom is Deputy Director of Project Controls at the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, one of Australia's largest transport megaprojects. 

Tom is also pursuing a PhD at Deakin University, focusing on risk allocation in transport megaprojects through the lens of institutional theory.

Presentation: Risk allocation in Australian transport megaprojects

Teresa is an experienced power system engineer, currently a Group Manager in Operations at AEMO. She has worked in power systems in South Africa, West Australia and the National Electricity Market on the East Coast. 

Teresa has been responsible for real time power system and market operations as well as the engineering, operational planning and analysis required to support this.

Her current accountabilities include the analysis of risk associated with operation of the National Electricity Market power system, particularly that associated with high impact low probability events.

Presentation: Reducing operational risk on a transitioning energy system

Craig is a distinguished civil engineer with more than 29 years of experience in diverse construction environments including transport, airports, mining and metals, treatment plants, renewables and urban development.

In his role as Chief Risk Officer of the BMD Group he leads the functions of Risk, Safety, Environmental, Commercial, National Estimating and Insurance where he is responsible for providing critical guidance in risk and ensuring great risk management practices are engaged across the group to achieve excellent performance outcomes. 

Craig fosters a comprehensive risk management culture and has an overarching focus on developing people, mentoring and broader industry engagement. His dedication to health and safety, the workforce and the broader industry has defined his career and led to significant and outstanding accomplishments.

Presentation: Risk engineering, risk culture and harnessing the power of the team

Linda has over 20 years of Project and Portfolio Management experience in Renewable Energy and Automotive sectors, delivering and optimising large scale projects/portfolios across Australia and internationally. Linda has been at the forefront of risk/opportunity management, setting up Risk Management systems, tools, processes and governance and managing project/portfolio risks at Vestas and AGL. In her current role as Head of PMO APAC at Vestas, Linda built the department from one employee (herself) to a team of 46 to manage Cost Control, Scheduling, Risk Management, Issue Resolution/Lessons Learned, Processes and Documentation across Vestas APAC Construction portfolio.

Linda has a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Engineering (Sustainable Energy) from RMIT University, a Postgraduate Diploma of Management and is Project Management Professional (PMP) certified.