With an engineer for an uncle who travelled the world, civil engineering sounded like the job for Nial O’Brien.
“When I was a teenager there was a bypass being built around the town I lived, called Braintree, which is in Essex, England, and this gave me visuals of what civil engineering was all about and how I could get into the industry,” he says.
Nial registered at the University of Hertfordshire in 1994 to study Civil Engineering. After graduating, he obtained his Class 1 Heavy Combination licence in 1997 and spent a couple of years driving T44s and semis all over Europe, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
“It was a good period of my career in terms of getting hands-on experience and understanding the issues with the industry,” he says. “I feel it’s given me a pretty good platform to have a voice in the room – I’ve not just been a designer or someone who can just talk about freight, I’ve been behind the wheel and experienced it firsthand amongst multiple jurisdictions.”
Nial left driving to work for an engineering contractor and then moved to engineering consulting in 2000. He moved to Australia in 2005 and joined Aurecon to continue his journey.
“I’ve been here ever since,” he says. “I plan and design roads and highways and big freight projects across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.”
Nial has been involved with several major projects during his career. However, he says his favourite would belong to the Pacific Highway Woolgoolga to Ballina project, which involved a 155-kilometre pacific upgrade which through two big river systems and nine years of his career.
“I took that project from route options all the way to concept design before it was handed over to contractors to do the detail design and construct,” he says. “I learnt a lot on that project which could contribute to the viability of industries in this country. That particular section of the road had up to 20,000 vehicles a day at certain points but only 4,000 of those were interstate traffic, so it was carrying a lot of trucks from one end to another.
“That was the primary reason why the road was being considered and to be constructed, because those vehicles were travelling on roads which were mapped out over a hundred years ago and desperately needed to be upgraded in order to drive efficiency and safety.”
In hindsight, Nial says he enjoys looking ahead and contemplating what the future holds for the transport industry. He also believes that it’s very importing for designers, operators and legislators to work together to plan what the industry looks like tomorrow.
“I see the changes in the next 20 years to be far greater than what we’ve experienced over the last 70,” he says. “There’s huge opportunities in terms of what the industry can be in 20 years’ time when we look at emerging technologies and trends in freight safety and efficiency.
“I think it’s important to always think about the future, because if you just accept what’s happening today, then you can become irrelevant pretty quickly.”
Industry Innovators
Made possible by Smedley’s Engineers, Industry Innovators is a series dedicated to honouring the individuals who are transforming the commercial road transport industry.
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