Who We
Are
We value people above everything else as we realise through many years of experience that excellence and continuous improvement is cultivated through a culture of candidness, trust, flexibility, inclusion and rewards.
Creating an environment for our team to bring the best of themselves enables us to thrive, individually and as a team.
Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
At Enspire we value diversity, inclusion and firmly believe in equal rights for all.
Enspire acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work, the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Equally as important, we have issued a human rights statement in-line with the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This is a sign of our commitment to respecting human rights and sets a strong foundation for Enspire’s support for the United Nations Global Compact.
Driving Enspire is an extraordinary team of deeply committed and experienced all-stars in the fields of civil engineering and project management, all working at the peak of their powers to deliver visions for our clients, all while, building an impenetrable culture of excellence within the organisation.
Each is a leader in his or her craft and we are proud to introduce them to you.
Meet Enspire's Leadership Team
Meet Enspire's Leadership Team
Meet Enspire's Talented Senior Team
Our leadership and senior teams are supported by our team of talented individuals
Andrew Dawes
DIRECTOR
Andrew is a founding Director of Enspire and approaches engineering with passion and enthusiasm. He strives to provide unparalleled customer service, supported by strong technical knowledge. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer and specialises in both brownfields and greenfields urban development projects and approaches every project with the core values – quality, technical excellence and communication. Andrew’s passion extends to the development of people and building a great team within Enspire.
What do you love about your career?
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I have always loved engineering as well as property, building and development. Personally I am an avid property investor and developer and understand the process from both the clients and consultants side
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I love problem solving and challenging myself and others for a better outcome
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I love bringing great people together. As a manager / mentor I consider it a privilege to be a part of, and influence people’s lives professionally and personally
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
Historically you would find me at a desk or planning an overseas holiday. Now days I have a young family so I spend as much time as I can with them relaxing, socialising, boating or at the beach. I love spending time teaching my kids all that I know.
Michael Hodges
DIRECTOR
Michael is a Director of Enspire and leads the team to deliver cost effective, practical engineering solutions. Michael maintains a hands-on role, sharing his knowledge across the team to ensure Enspire provides engineering solutions that are meet the vision of our clients.
With over 30 years’ experience in the civil engineering industry, Michael has contributed to a wide and varied range of developments, from greenfield and brownfield residential, industrial, commercial, and retail across Australia.
Michael's leadership is founded on integrity both within the Enspire team and with the many repeat stakeholders he has worked with over his career.
What do you love about your career?
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Being able to share my experience and knowledge across the Enspire team and with our clients.
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Not just providing an engineering solution, but providing engineering options and cost effective, practical solutions.
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Providing opportunity for the team to grow their technical skills.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
Spending time with family and friends is always on the weekend agenda. Going out for a meal after working in the garden, a game of tennis and on a nice summer’s day water skiing.
Cameron Vella
DIRECTOR
Cameron is a founding Director of Enspire and leads Enspire to seriously challenge the interpretation of “a great consultant”. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer and specialises in the management of civil infrastructure with civil engineering, property development and multi-disciplinary project planning skills. Cameron applies civil engineering and development management experience to his consulting services. His leadership is founded on building genuine trust with the team and stakeholders through a collaborative and sincere approach.
What do you love about your career?
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I love working with great people whether they are colleagues, clients or other consultants. It's a great feeling to collaborate with clever and motivated individuals as they always challenge you to be better.
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I love solving engineering problems and navigating approval pathways to deliver our client's visions. After more than 20 years, I am now able to easily navigate Sydney and point out many great projects I have been part of. It's an amazing feeling.
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I love working with younger people and helping them forge their own career paths. It is really motivating for me to see people reach and surpass their potential. This is what gets me out of bed each morning and the key motivation for starting Enspire.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
I'd be spending time with my wife and children, going for walks and enjoying the outdoors. I am definitely in the nerd category for BBQ'ing. I typically plan a weekend meal a week ahead. It's great to have the family involved too. Neapolitan style pizza or a reverse seared picanha are the family favourites.
Matt Lester
ASSOCIATE / SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Matthew is a foundation member of Enspire and has a passion for design. He is a Senior Civil Engineer, an Associate of the business and is skilled in the design and delivery of roads, earthworks, stormwater and water quality infrastructure across residential subdivision, industrial and retail development sectors. Matthew applies his civil engineering experience as a Job Manager within Enspire, with a proud focus on client engagement and business development.
What do you love about your career?
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I love the variety of different projects and people you come across in civil engineering. One day I can be working on a green-fields master-planned residential subdivision, the next a technical infrastructure project. Each has their own unique challenges, and I enjoy finding solutions to those challenges.
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I have a passion for learning and development, and in my role at Enspire I am able to help the younger generation of engineers develop their skills and learn new things. Seeing our young engineers solve problems and deliver projects with skills that I helped teach them is something that motivates me every day.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
I am right into endurance and adventure sports so you would most likely find me out in the bush, riding or running the trails. I am also a bit of a food lover as well as a ‘dog-person’ so if I’m not in the bush, you can likely find me with my wife and dog searching for the next favourite café between trips to the dog beach.
Lauren Connors
ASSOCIATE / SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER
Lauren is a Senior Project Manager who specialises in the project management of land development projects with civil engineering, infrastructure and multi-disciplinary project co-ordination skills. Her project management style is based on valuing people and building strong relationships with all team members and stakeholders to motivate and influence the desired outcome for the Client. Her experience includes leading design teams to achieve client set programme and budget targets and liaison and negotiation with agencies to influence the desired outcome for the Client.
What do you love about your career?
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I love that no two days are the same and that there is always a new challenge or problem to try and resolve.
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I love interacting with Clients, consultants and colleagues and working together as a team to deliver the project for the Client. I find it very satisfying watching all of the pieces come together knowing the important part we get to play and have made some wonderful friendships along the way.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
You will often find me sailing on the harbour or competing in offshore sailing events. When I am not getting covered in salt water I will be trying to relax with a good book, walking one of Sydney’s local bush tracks or catching up with friends and family.
Rob Hutchinson
ASSOCIATE / SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Robert is an Associate Senior Civil Engineer who prides himself on creating a harmonious and energetic environment within his team whilst building genuine relationships with clients. Robert’s passion and respect for the people around him brings out a focus within the team to help deliver outstanding project outcomes.
During the course of Robert’s career, he has had the opportunity to work as a draftsperson, qualified civil designer, qualified civil engineer, design manager and Project Manager which has enabled him to develop into an experienced and well-rounded engineer.
What do you love about your career?
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I enjoy being surrounded by people that strive to do great things, this in turn drives the passion within me to do great things.
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The various skills required, and the diversity engineering and project management can bring, is what I truly love. Some days can be quite challenging and working through the challenges can be very rewarding. The result of what we do can be so exciting. Seeing a project come to life after spending so much time master planning, designing, and constructing, then looking at the finished product can be such a proud moment for myself, and the people involved.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
I like staying active so that would usually involve playing basketball as part of a regular Sunday competition, getting out in the garden, going to the beach, or going for long walks/ hikes. Unwinding over the weekend would often involve friends, family, food, and drinks.
Brendan Larkin
CAD MANAGER / SENIOR CIVIL DRAFTER
Brendan studied Sustainable Architectural Design in Ireland before starting his career as a civil drafter in Sydney. He is passionate about generating high quality documentation, continuously improving efficiency and sharing his technical knowledge throughout the team. As Enspire’s CAD Manager, Brendan is responsible for the generation and quality of Enspire’s drawings across all projects while continuously improving and maintaining Enspire’s documentation processes. He possesses experience in generating drawing packages for large master planned communities and offers specialised 3D-Visualisation capabilities for Enspire’s clients.
What do you love about your career?
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I love the process of creating a great drawing package for our clients. From the first line that I draw to the completed package, I am always learning something new or finding a better way to approach a task.
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I love working with great people that share the same passion as me for creating the best possible work. No matter what the size of a job, they all have their own challenges and they all require skill and accuracy. Having the people around me to achieve this while making it challenging and fun is extremely rewarding.
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I love the challenges that engineering software presents me with on a daily basis. Whether it is improving our systems, customising a software to improve our efficiency or troubleshooting a problem, the ability to improve the teams efficiency and well-being is extremely satisfying.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
On the weekend you might find me out running around The Royal Botanical Gardens or Centennial Park. If I am not running I am playing Saturday O35s (sad face) football around the North Shore. This is often followed by catching up with mates and going to watch our beloved Sydney FC play football. The search for new places to eat and hidden small bars is a continuous weekend activity.
Petar Matic
SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER
Petar is a Senior Project Manager with a passion for construction related activities and contract administration. He specialises in the delivery management of civil infrastructure projects predominately on large scale residential developments. He acts as the Project Manager and Superintendent to coordinate utility, road and drainage works from post-development application to occupation. Petar values clear communication and delivers client centric consulting services. His passion for contract administration has led him to study a Masters of Construction Law.
What do you love about your career?
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I love being able to interact with such a diverse array of different stakeholder’s during a typical project lifecycle (client’s, contractor’s, sub consultant’s, authorities etc) and ensuring we are all working towards a common goal for the project.
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I often think of myself as more of a project “facilitator” in that we work with some very talented individuals and my role is to simply allow these team members to perform at their very best.
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I have always loved the construction industry and gain immense satisfaction from seeing a project come to life and the transition from merely an idea/concept in our client’s mind and turning this into a reality
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
Weekends are definitely relaxation time! I do love a BBQ, so most weekends you will find me cooking outdoors whilst catching up with friends and family. If I’m feeling active I might have a round of tennis or golf and if the weather is particularly nice, I might go for a motorcycle ride to one of the beautiful beaches we have here in Sydney.
Rob Lenferna
SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Rob is a highly experienced Civil Engineer with specific experience in civil design, project management and contract management of a wide range of projects for both private practice and local government. His focus is to promote innovation, increase accuracy for constructability, and to challenge conventional approaches.
What do you love about your career?
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I love solving problems which cannot be solved using conventional thinking. I want to understand the reasoning behind the design guidelines and standards to help fashion the best outcome for a particular problem, not just apply rules without context.
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Given my 11 years in local government engineering in various Councils in Sydney, I love passing on perspectives to my colleagues to help them understand how local government processes work and how to anticipate what public domain aspects Council engineers really need, and why. Most of our deliverables require Council approval, so appreciating their perspective can only reduce the obstacles to achieving approvals.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
On the weekend you would hopefully find me walking in the bush, or next to the sea, or in a suburb I have never visited before. If the weather doesn’t permit, I will be doing chores or happily hanging out at home drinking tea.
Shawn Hotong
SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Shawn is a Chartered Engineering professional with a passion for problem solving. He is skilled in the design of roads and stormwater for residential subdivisions, industrial sites and retirement villages and thrives on assisting clients identify and resolve approval mechanisms that challenge project progress. Shawn is also involved in establishing technical standards and processes for the organisation to improve efficiency, documentation quality and quality of work life for staff (i.e. making it easier to get things done).
What do you love about your career?
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I enjoy applying technical principles to problems at various stages in a development. I may be assisting a client balance engineering possibilities against legislative constraints for a +200 hectare development site one day and figuring out the hydraulic performance of a 20m section of stormwater pipe the next. I rarely feel that the days start to feel the same as there are always unique problems to be solved.
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I enjoy the feeling of putting together clean and technically robust engineering drawing packages and reports. Like home cooks enjoy putting together Masterchef creations I enjoy the process and outcomes from engineering design.
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I enjoy explaining and justifying clearly design solutions to complex problems for a range of stakeholders. In some cases the audience may be less technically capable while in others the audience may be industry peers with +30 years of experience. Having an audience completely understand, engage, discuss and agree to a unique idea can be equally as satisfying as the idea itself.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
I would typically be spending time with my wife trying not to watch the next episode of so-and-so show and failing miserably to do something more constructive. This will be changing very soon with our first child due in March 2021.
Rick Andrew
SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Rick is a Senior Civil Engineer, an Associate of the business and has diverse experience across a range of urban development and transportation infrastructure projects. With over a decade working in the engineering industry, Rick has a strong technical foundation and a history of delivering successful projects across a range of sectors. Rick applies his civil engineering experience as a Job Manager within Enspire with a proud focus on clients and delivery.
What do you love about your career?
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I have a passion for mentoring and leadership which has played a large part in shaping my career; from working in great teams, to building and leading teams of my own. I love to see people grow and get a kick out of helping team members progress in their professional development.
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I love solving problems and challenging the norm to deliver solutions for clients that help them to achieve their goals.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
If it is warm, I will be down at the beach and if it is winter, I will be at the snow snowboarding with my wife and son in tow. I love to spend time with my friends and family, especially if we can get away for a weekend to explore somewhere new.
Dale Apple
SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER
Dale is a Senior Project Manager with a solid background in construction and planning related activities. Much of his significant background relates to the development of civil infrastructure projects but he also has experience with large scale industrial and commercial developments. He acts as the Project Manager to coordinate tender submissions, application approvals, services, and road and drainage works through pre-development to post-development. Dale values open communication and does not shy away from honest conversations concerning project delivery and budget constraints.
What do you love about your career?
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I love being able to build the areas that will be populated within the next 80+ years. I am enamoured by the thought that I am leaving an indelible “fingerprint” on the growth of a major city, and I take great pride in seeing the completion of well-planned development.
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Of course, my efforts to engage each member of the team to see the vision is paramount to achieving the outcomes necessary to continue a successful business, as well as ensuring client satisfaction.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
As I am not native to Australia, weekends find me outside and taking in the sights and sounds of the local area through bushwalks, or a leisurely stroll along a scenic beach, or catching up with friends for a cold beverage. Travel is really my “go to” item as everything is new to me in Australia – from Newcastle to Broome, Darwin to Kangaroo Island - this allows unlimited opportunities for new sights to take in whenever I can.
Matt Condos
SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEER
Matthew is a Senior Civil Engineer who specialises in engineering design and project delivery across residential subdivision, industrial, retail, and multi-disciplinary developments. Matthew values himself on is ability to work closely with his colleagues, perform as a Job Manager and deliver high quality products and services to his clients. During his career Matthew has had the opportunity to work as a Hydraulic Engineer, Civil Engineer and Job Manager, all of which has provided a wide range of experience over the years.
What do you love about your career?
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I love being part of a team that strives to deliver innovate, incredible and challenging projects. Driving through a project that I helped design and seeing people live their lives in a place that didn’t exist before is really fulfilling.
Developing positive, professional relationships directly with our clients and fellow colleagues at Enspire, is what I love most. I love adding to the inclusive and innovative culture at Enspire.
What would we find you doing on the weekend?
I love spending my weekends at the beach surfing and travelling up and down the coast in search for waves. Spending quality time with my family and friends is also a must, which often involves good food, drinks, and many laughs.
Maintaining an active lifestyle throughout my day-to-day routines is also important to me.