As a part of a series of stories profiling people of influence from around Beca, we asked our General Manager - Transport and Infrastructure NZ Tracey Haszard to tell us about her career journey and life outside of work.
You’ve been at Beca for 30 years – what has kept you here all that time?
I started here straight out of university with a Masters in coastal engineering, but what’s kept me here is there’s just so much variety in what you can do.
I often say to people, yes, I’ve stayed at the same company, but I haven’t stayed in the same job for more than two or three years at a time.
I started in our ports and coastal team, then went to Samoa for two years on a major project. It was about as big as it could get in the coastal space. When I came back, I felt like I’d outgrown coastal and ended up working on planning and delivering motorways in Auckland, including Grafton Gully.
That got me into transport and into project management, coordinating large multidisciplinary teams. At that point it doesn’t really matter what type of project it is. You’re asking: what is this project about, what’s the outcome, what capabilities do we need in the team and then it becomes a coordination exercise from there. After that I somehow became manager of our civil structures team, despite spending my university years trying to avoid structures papers.
From there I moved into the operational side of the business and spent around seven years doing business improvement, establishing what is now the Delivery Practice group. A lot of that work was about change management and finding better ways of doing things. I’m one of those people who, if I can see a better way to do something, I’ll push to get that happening for the benefit of everyone. I’m not going to sit there and say, “somebody should fix that”. If it could be better, I try to do something about it.
Eventually I moved back into the delivery side of the business, into land development, and then on to my current role. So when people ask what’s kept me here, it’s really been the opportunity to keep doing different things.
Is that freedom to try new things in your career something that makes Beca unique?
I think we are unique in the New Zealand market because of the breadth of what we do and the multiple geographies we have.
But I also think we really value people saying, “actually, I want to try that”. If they’ve got the right capabilities and attributes to be successful, we’ll support them.
Lots of people move around and do lots of different things here. Some people don’t, and that’s great too. There are people whose aspiration is simply to do more of what they already love doing, and they are incredibly important to us as well.
How have all those different roles shaped the way you lead?
One thing is curiosity.
When leading multi-disciplinary teams, you need to understand enough about each discipline to help that part of the project or business achieve what it’s trying to achieve. You need to understand how it connects with other things, what the relationships are and what barriers might arise.
You can only get that by asking questions and being curious about how things work.
The other side of it is knowing what you don’t know. When I was leading the civil structures team, there was no way I was going to start designing bridges. That meant I had to focus on enabling the team rather than doing the work myself.
I couldn’t fall into the trap of thinking it would be easier just to do the work than manage and support the people delivering it.
Did you always want to be an engineer?
Not really. I don’t think I even knew what engineering was when I decided to study it.
What happened was that I was really good at maths and science at school. When I was about 15, the University of Auckland ran a day for girls who were interested in those subjects to come and learn about engineering.
I don’t really remember what I learned on the day, but I do remember the fluids lab in the basement of the engineering school. They had these big flumes where you could simulate riverbeds and flows and I just thought “oh, I want to play with that!” So basically, I went to engineering school so I could play in the fluids lab.
In fact, I did a Masters because I hadn’t had enough of playing in the fluids lab. I built a scale model of Ōrewa Beach for my Masters and ran scenarios and simulations on beach erosion and management measures.
So I sort of fell into engineering. But looking back, my dad definitely has an engineering brain. He started engineering at university himself but ultimately he took a different career path.
Has it been challenging working in a male-dominated field?
Honestly I never found it challenging to be a woman in engineering, but definitely, as I’ve gotten more senior, I’ve realised how important it is that I’m a visible leader because I do truly believe you can’t become what you can’t see.
I was on the Women’s Infrastructure Network Advisory Board for a while, which was probably the formal side of advocacy. But for me it’s about being visible so other women can go, “actually, it is possible, I could go into that role”. Beca is extraordinary in that space, particularly right now where we have so many senior women leaders and we are the envy of the industry.
Outside of work, we hear dragon boating keeps you busy. What do you enjoy about it?
My dragon boating journey actually started at Beca, we used to have a dragon boating team. For years I kept saying I should give it a go, and eventually I stopped talking about it and actually got in the boat.
Because I’m short – physics come into it – my place is at the back of the boat, which is perfect for me because dragon boating for me is about not being the leader. My job is to just get in the boat, be part of the team and do the best I can for the benefit of the team – and that’s what motivates me. I also like observing how the people who are leading our team operate, what they’re doing, how people respond. I definitely get some lessons in leadership from the back of the boat.
The culture in the team is very much about the team, rather than competition and training. Some teams train every day, have nutritionists, but for us we train Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and after our Thursday sessions we go and grab a beer and some fish bites together. And that’s one of the leadership lessons: when you focus on the team, the performance comes. Sure, we do less training than some other teams, but we can still compete with them because of the commitment of our team to working with each other – and having fun while we do.
Looking back over 30 years, what project are you most proud of?
My first urban development project was leading the infrastructure assessment to rezone Wynyard Quarter – to take it from its port and industrial past, and imagine what it could be like in the future.
That was a project team that had architects and planners and lawyers and urban designers from a bunch of organisations. We spent hours with blank pieces of paper drawing out what this could be like. We often used to imagine ourselves coming here in the future and going “look at what we did”. And now here I am, coming to work every day to the Beca headquarters here in the Wynyard Quarter – it’s really lovely to be able to hang out in and use something that you’ve imagined for such a long time.
You’ve described yourself as a systems thinker. What does that mean?
I really struggle to just look at one little piece of something in front of me, I need to know how everything fits together into the broader picture.
And that’s very much what I bring to my project work and to my leadership – looking not just at what I’m doing, but asking how it fits with everything else, where are the synergies, what can we do to have multiple impacts, multiple outcomes to achieve something better for a community.
I think there’s also a very human-centred aspect to that thinking. How do people actually occupy the spaces we create? What do they do with them? What do they do with the bits that we didn’t intentionally create when we’re doing our projects?
I was in Brisbane a few years ago and walking through an area called Fish Lane. All the sites along the lane were bought up and turned into some great spaces, but there was a rail bridge that goes over the top of the lane which could have been a dark, dingy space underneath. Some clever developer turned that space under the bridge into the coolest little bar, with great lighting and plants everywhere. It was one of those examples where someone has used a space in a completely different way to how it was originally planned – and it’s those kind of things that give a place life and character.
You’ve been involved in all sorts of transport projects over your career, and you lead our Transport and Infrastructure team, so we can’t end before asking: What’s your favourite mode of transport?
Probably walking to be honest!
I like to walk a lot, and I really enjoy the days where I get the chance to add a walk to my commute. I like the connection that you get with what’s really going on in the area you’re walking through, all the little nooks and crannies and the urban environments you see.
Yesterday was one of those days – it was a lovely day, and I thought I’d get off the bus across town and walk along the water, through the Viaduct to the office. There’s a little hole-in-the-wall espresso place there that makes a really good piccolo right where the bus stops, so that’s a good motivator too!
