Infrastructure: Geoffrey Beck - Head of Infrastructure Division

1 December 2007

By John Henry

Geoffrey Beck was born in Rarawai in Fiji and lived his early life in Cairns and Ingham North Queensland. He later moved to Sydney and was educated at Normanhurst Boys High School.

From school he was accepted into the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1976 to study engineering through the University of NSW.

"I graduated from RMC in the Class of 1979 and pursued a career with the Royal Australian Engineers which included postings in technical, staff and leadership appointments," said Beck.

These years led to him amassing enormous and valuable experience including postings in Army's Land Command, RAAF Air Command, the Defence Materiel Organisation, the Personnel Executive, Army Office and Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group.

Beck said, "I think they all contributed but I guess the one that stands out in my mind is when I was commanding officer of the combat engineer regiment a unit which was part of the first brigade which is now located in Darwin at Robertson Barracks but in those days the brigade and my unit were separated and split between Sydney and Darwin and it was a very challenging transition and involved a lot of travel.

"Trying to lead a unit of around 450 and being expected to bring people through a process of change and I learnt a lot about giving people comfort about the change even though there might be some pain along the way."

After 27 years of service Beck moved to work in Defence industry where he specialised in program management and base technical operations and management with Raytheon a large defence company running contracts for Government customers, particularly in the space communications complex in the Tidbinbilla ACT which is part of the NASA deep space network.

He was responsible for managing all of the systems on that communications station handling NASA's data exchange between the ground and spacecraft.

Beck explains, "This involved the electronic systems, communications, mechanical systems, and the running of the base, everyone from the cooks in the canteen to the high end logistics people."

Bringing it all together
Returning to work in Defence as Head of Infrastructure Division in 2005 Beck said was an easy decision.

"A job came up and I applied for it because it was a position that would require the bringing together of all the things I'd done during my career to date and there were significant challenges that the infrastructure area of defence had to go through back then and I felt I had an opportunity to contribute."

As Head of Infrastructure Division in the Department of Defence, Beck is responsible for the management of a large real estate portfolio.

The Defence Estate comprises approximately 400 properties and 25,000 assets with an estimated gross replacement value of $15 billion embracing both the built and natural environment.

The Infrastructure Division comprises 280 Australian Public Service and ADF officers.

The Division is responsible for the lifecycle management of the Estate including development, approval and delivery of capital infrastructure works; estate planning; management of environmental and heritage matters and the disposal of surplus Defence properties.

"There has been a property disposal program for a number of years. We have a number of properties on the program that we are disposing of at the moment, and that can vary from small properties that are no longer required by defence or even some larger properties.

"For example Maribyrnong in Victoria where we are working to try and understand and manage what's on the property because sometimes these sites do contain bits of contamination that we have to work on before we put them to the market," said Beck.

Ways and means
Infrastructure Division manages about $4 billion of infrastructure projects under development and delivery through traditional contracting methods and a number of significant Public Private Partnership projects.

"Within the infrastructure program we have the major capital facilities program and over the forward ten years, which is similar to the defence capability plan and the major equipment program."

The capital expenditure on capital facilities projects in 2006-07 was in the order of $600 million.

"And it's actually growing over the next couple of years and the reason for that is because of decisions taken for government initiatives like the enhanced land force and to buy new equipment which all come with an infrastructure component.

"Our estimates are that in a couple of years we'll be close to a billion a year just for a few years and then it will taper off again. It is a very active five years that we are within now and a lot of this mirrors what the capability world is currently delivering."

Infrastructure Division combines sustainable environmental management with best practice infrastructure delivery, within the framework of commonwealth legislation, to provide the infrastructure that supports Australian Defence capability.

Defence is a founding member of the Green Building Council of Australia and by virtue of Beck's position he is a Board Member of the Council.

The Council aims at improving the ecological sustainable development in the building and property sector.

"Defence well before my time became involved as a founding member and the reason defence did it is that we have a lot of buildings and the cost of running those buildings is significant and we saw it as a way of getting a better environmental outcome overall but also making the buildings more efficient and seeking to reduce our running costs.

"It's a property industry council with members who are development companies' councils etc, and it's fantastic for defence to be a part of this as whilst we make our contributions we benefit by learning a lot of things from other members of the organisation. For Australia overall we get terrific outcomes."