Water Industry Alliance
Issue No. 43 - October/November 2008
Busy Tonkin repeats past success
For the better part of three decades, largescale waste water schemes have been bigticket items for the Water division of civil engineering firm, Tonkin Consulting, with local government the significant client group.
Gerry Doyle, Team Leader, Water and Wastewater for Tonkin, says most business comes to the firm with little marketing required, but the present volume of work poses problems.
“We are trying to focus on historic areas of the business and our long-term clients who
can deliver targetted growth,” Gerry says.
Tonkin is emphasising long-term relationships because, Gerry believes, at some point the market will change, becoming slower. The future will stem from today’s “deliberate strategic decisions”.
Most customers are governments, but not all.
Tonkin is gearing up to provide water infrastructure services to the mining industry.
Strategy is “very much focussed” on providing detailed design and on-going administration services.
It’s helpful to have a solid background when pitching for projects intended to last 20-50 years and costing millions of dollars.
“Our major obstacle is people. If we had more people we could do more work,” Gerry says. Tonkin has had to refuse work because of short staffing. He says competition for qualified graduates is fierce and skilled workers with five or more years’ experience vary in quality from inadequate to “really great”. Tonkin prefers graduates who can b...
