Mick Douge
Director, Rail and Infrastructure
When mistakes can cost lives and delays mean mega-dollars, precision is at the heart of everything.
That’s the life of a civil engineer at sea.
“Precision was paramount - what could go wrong, what are the risk assessments - that rigour of doing things is at another level because out there you’re a lone ranger, you are in the middle of nowhere on water.”
A seasoned veteran of offshore construction, Mick Douge spent the better part of twenty years managing oil and gas projects off the coasts of Europe, Asia and in the treacherous Bass Strait.
And if there is a skill he mastered, it was planning.
“Even back then on the larger barges it was up to a million dollars per day lost if you had a delay. So, all of the planning, transport and fabrication onshore – down to the last bolt and making sure you had a spare bolt, because a single bolt you haven’t got in the middle of the North Sea means you’re behind for two days,” he said.
“It really taught me that if you’re going to do projects well you have to plan, and keep planning, and don’t stop planning.”
Mick Douge was just year out of University when he decided to join friends on a month-long combi van tour of Europe.
“We were pretty good in terms of looking after each other, but there were injuries and the consequences of getting something wrong were horrific.”
Now Director of Rail and Infrastructure on Australia’s biggest project, the Suburban Rail Loop, the Melbournian says safety is still his priority, even with major construction on Stage One of the 90-kilometre rail line two years away.
“For me it’s a very emotional question - I’ve been involved in a couple of incidents where people have been badly hurt and I can’t be more passionate about safety, and it absolutely starts on day one.”
“It’s not just the underground work, the cranage – we give a lot of attention to those things but it’s the safety and wellbeing of everybody 24/7. We need to start that culture now, so people appreciate that we’re really serious about it. Everybody needs to go home safety and come back the following day,” Mr Douge said.
Over forty years spanning the infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, water and waste water sectors, Mick Douge is an industry leader in major project management and delivery.
While there are some major differences across the industries he has worked in, he says the fundamentals of delivering projects well are the same.
“To bring all the collective skill sets across appreciation of risk, safety, decision making – all those important pillars of project success are transferable.”
Mr Douge leads a team of talented local and international engineers, designers and rail planners who have worked on rail projects around the world.
Their work is well underway developing all the technical components and physical assets of the project, from new and integrated stations, to trains and tunnels, tracks, power, communication and signalling.
To say it is a herculean effort to manage a project on such a scale, with an anticipated budget of $50 billion and a 30-year timeline, seems something of an understatement.
Thankfully, Mick Douge is pretty good at planning down to the last bolt.