In this spin-off of our ‘day in the life’ blog series, we sat down with the Directors behind BRS to chat about their careers to date, from the milestones that have brought them the most pride, to the valuable lessons they’ve learned along the way. This month, we were joined by Glenn Barker to discuss his role as a Director.
What is your profession, and what do you love about what you do?
I studied Civil Engineering.
It was a great way of getting my foot in the door for my career, providing civil engineering, project management, development engineering, traffic engineering, transport planning and subdivision certification services to the property development and government infrastructure industries.
What are you most proud of / what stands out for you as a major milestone of the company?
I am most proud of being involved with building a great team of professionals that are the heart of BRS.
We are very fortunate to have a great bunch of hard working, resilient, very capable and fun-to-be-with people on our team that work in a collaborative way to successfully and continually deliver projects for our clients.
Where do you feel the industry is headed? What are some of the challenges you’re preparing BRS to face?
With the recent acquisition of Digitise Consulting, BRS now have the capabilities to go deep and wide in the provision of Digital Engineering and Asset Management services and make our internal workflows more efficient.
The next step for us is to fully optimise the use of AI to further streamline our systems, to continue to improve the delivery of our services to our clients and to make BRS even more sustainable.
If you could offer yourself a piece of advice as you were just starting your career, what would it be and why?
Focus on your long-term goal rather than just get bounced around by short term tasks. This provides a North Star to guide you through career decisions.
Concentrate on your own growth (knowledge, skills and how you relate with people) and on building your resilience; most successful people I know are not necessarily the smartest and the most knowledgeable, they are the ones that relate well with others and are very very resilient.
Be brutally honest with yourself and your abilities, including taking ownership of your actions and embrace and learn from your mistakes. Be very open to feedback from others as this is your greatest opportunity to learn and grow.
Celebrate your wins! You need to pat yourself on the back from time to time. I’m definitely guilty of not doing this enough through my career.
Work life balance – don’t define yourself by just your work. There is nothing more important than spending time with family, friends and doing activities that boost your own wellbeing.
