About the Principal

Profile

Steven Campbell is a chemical engineer and company director with four decades in heavy industry. He began with ICI Australia (now Orica) in 1985, and from 1996 led delivery of WMC's $1B Queensland Fertilizer Project, including the world's largest metallurgical sulphuric acid plant at Mt Isa. He founded Campbell Dynamics in 2000.

Since then he has directed feasibility studies, independent project reviews and project delivery for clients including Iluka Resources, Yancoal Australia, Infigen Energy and the $5B Gladstone green hydrogen consortium. Clients engage him for the same reasons they keep him: rigour, plain speaking, skilled negotiation and composure under pressure.

He has served on the boards of Stanwell Corporation and Gladstone Ports Corporation, and as a non-executive director of private companies in insurance broking and engineering services.

Testimonials

"Steven & I were part of a team of new Board Directors brought onto the Gladstone Ports Corporation board to, among other things, introduce formal project management skills to a brownfields expansion that was under way. Steven brought strong ethics, honest communication and specific project management tools to the board. In terms of having both board-level governance & strategy skills and real life technical expertise in project financial & operational management, he remains the most valuable Board director I know. Importantly, his advice was delivered with diplomacy and self-deprecation to minimise management defensiveness during difficult discussions."

"Steven has a rare talent for strategic and methodical unravelling of complex issues… He has proved able to find specialist problem-solving personnel at very short notice and also to be able to ferret out vital third-party data in complicated areas."

"I enjoyed working with Steven and I felt that together we were able to bring clarity to the business strategy and discipline over the company's governance and management practices. In particular, Steven was able to introduce a strong culture of risk management over the pricing and project management of major contracts… This improved pricing regime was very valuable to the management team who were able to submit tenders with more confidence around margins and prices as well as report project results to the Board with reliability that the profits were being delivered. Steven is also very well-connected in the resources industry especially, uses his network effectively, and was very helpful in making introductions to win new business… an effective decision-maker who worked well with the management team and someone who likes to get things done."

"Steven is a highly focused, experienced and professional project leader and engineer who brings with him a competent and equally focused and experienced multi-disciplinary team if required. His attention to detail was exemplary… The project plan was comprehensive and prioritised; tasks, actions and accountabilities were clearly defined, communicated and understood, and client feedback was timely and objective. Steven and his team ensured that issues were appropriately escalated but were carefully vetted so as not to waste the client's time."