Large-scale resources, local teams

Spiire has been in operation for more than 35 years. In that time, we’ve grown to become one of Australia’s largest employee-owned property and infrastructure consultants, working on projects of significant scale and complexity across our network of offices.

Now with over 350 employees working from 10 offices in VIC, NSW, QLD, SA and the ACT, we support local development projects with local expertise.

Launching in 2023, our office in Adelaide is the latest addition to the Spiire business, led by civil engineer Harrison Spurling. Harrison says instilling the culture and values that Spiire is known for was an important consideration in establishing a presence in South Australia.

“Working at Spiire for a long time, I’ve seen the opportunities the business does give,” he says. “This is the third Spiire office I’ve worked in now and I’ve probably stepped foot in the majority of others. I can honestly say when you walk through the door you see people sitting with each other, helping each other.”

Within his own career, Harrison has seen how Spiire’s breadth of disciplines and offices presents multiple pathways to pursue individual goals and learn from one another.

“We’ve got civil engineers moving into our water engineering team, and vice versa, quite often, to get that well-rounded technical engineering knowledge base. There are also designers moving into construction consultancy or project management work as well,” he says.

“You can really move through different areas of the business, including geographically, where the opportunities present themselves. It’s nice to have that flexibility and stability of a national business, but also be in a start-up environment here in Adelaide, which is really exciting,” he says.

For Albury / Wodonga engineer Paul McLachlan, the broad scope of working in a smaller regional office is furthering his professional development, as well as shaping the team culture.

“Rather than getting pigeon-holed in a specialty, you have to be good at design, you have to project manage, go on site, work with clients and authorities – you do all of it. Being in a smaller team means the culture becomes one where everyone is happy to pitch in and help out,” Paul says.

“Then you’ve also got the professionalism and backing of the larger business that you can call on from the other regions. For instance, the support and responsiveness of the in-house IT team is so valuable. It’s a really good mix.”

As one of the founding members of our Canberra team, Jonathon Boyd saw firsthand how valuable these resources were in establishing a new office. From the start, he found the support from the wider business allowed him to focus on clients and delivering local projects.

The resources of Spiire’s systems and IT teams were particularly valuable in the early months, to enable the local consultants to hit the ground running.

“The roadblocks are just not there, so you can run with what makes you enjoy your job,” he says. “One thing that was really impressive was our IT support. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it really is. The speed at which we’d get IT problems resolved was phenomenal; it emphasised that we were not isolated and really helped to feel connected to the rest of the company.”

While establishing itself, the Canberra team enjoyed frequent visitors from staff in other regions, as another source of connection and support.

“There was a nice rolling activity of people from Melbourne just coming up to work for the day. It reinforced a lot of things I was looking for in the workplace,” he says.