GRAVELROAD - Key Persons
David is an experienced General Manager and Executive Management Team member with extensive B2B channel experience across a range of sectors, combining strategy design and delivery with strong operational outcomes.
After gaining a BSc from Victoria University, the early part of David's career was in B2B technical sales across a range of industries including food manufacturing, water treatment and surface coatings. Following this, he gained General Management experience in the food manufacturing sector before working with Industrial Research (now Callaghan Innovation) to improve their commercial outcomes.
He has several years experience in senior roles related to the built environment, having spent 10 years working with PropertyIQ and Corelogic focusing on property data and analytics, followed by 4 years as General Manager of the commercial Consultancy Services business operated by BRANZ.
Prior to joining Gravelroad in 2021, David was consulting with a focus on sales effectiveness and enablement including capability optimisation, remuneration modelling and systems change. His most recent assignment was with Trade Me, where he drove sales enablement across their Motors, Property and Jobs verticals.
"The two most useless things in aviation are runway behind you and altitude above you." - Anon
David consults in management, economic, and competitive strategies for mainly utilities including the energy and telecommunications / ISP sectors. He is experienced in business development, business modelling, feasibility studies, and public / private partnership investment models. David provides coaching and overflow support for middle and senior managements and often assists in team development as part of this. David's role in Gravelroad is to manage the New Zealand customers and consultants. His focus is to maintain high quality advice from experienced people.
David's has a background in engineering and commerce. He has worked for Telecom NZ, CLEAR Communications, New Zealand Post, in senior management positions and was one of the original designers of the NZ and Australian EFTPOS systems. Early in his career he worked in military engineering in England. His depth in engineering and economics, and interest in management and behaviour, allows him to provide well rounded advice based on both experience and qualification to senior management in technology based organisations. He has lived and worked in Europe and Australia and also performed periodic assignments in Japan and the USA.
David is a strong strategic thinker with pragmatic implementation skills. He is a people person who enjoys work and supporting other people in the business challenges. He has the useful skill of being able to bridge the gulf between people and technology by being able to explain technology based frameworks and concepts in plain English to management, while being able to represent the requirements of the business clearly in technological frameworks. He enjoys seeing people do well in their careers and for many years has worked in the area of career counselling.
David's interests included watersports and flying aircraft. In the later area he has worked part time as a professional pilot for the last six years as an interest. In this role he has flown aircraft for, Public transport, Freight (including live chickens), Search and Rescue mining relief, and cyclone evacuation duties, in NZ, Australia, and East Timor.
David's focus for Gravelroad is to build a consulting company based on highly qualified and deeply experienced people at a reasonable cost who are genuinely focussed on the decisions of the client and able to assist in all areas from Strategy and Policy through to implementation and operations.
"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think" Einstein
David's varied and diverse career has encompassed geology, law, merchant banking and telecommunications. He has vast experience of business across Australasia and consults in management, economic, and competitive strategies for complex asset based utilities including the energy and telecommunications / ISP sectors. He is experienced in business modelling, feasibility studies, and investment models. David's role in Gravelroad is to manage the New Zealand clients in the Auckland region and focus on assisting Utility businesses in their development.
David has a strong technology, commercial and regulatory background. For the past two decades David has worked predominantly in the New Zealand telecommunications industry, the last four and a half years as Chief Executive of the Telecommunications Forum, the body representing the telecommunications industry.
Married to Susie with a teenage son, David's interests include travelling with his family and sailing.
Duncan is a technology all rounder. He has successfully designed, built, managed, project managed, product managed, and analysed a wide array Telecommunications Internet & IT solutions and systems in his career. He is enthusiastic, knowledgeable and a great communicator. Duncan provides analysis and business modeling, solution and systems design and development, project management, product management, expert telecommunications and Internet knowledge. He also provides valuable support for Pre Sales teams including customer needs determination, leadership and motivation, and delivering effective solutions and RFP responses..
Duncan has a Bachelor of Technology from Massey University. Over the last 29 years he has worked for most major NZ Telecoms companies including CLEAR, Telstra, and Telecom, ISPs Netlink and Paradise, CityLink and a wide range of other Corporate and Government departments. He has technical and sales and marketing skills. His understanding of systems is extensive and he has excellent analytical skills. Duncan is also a strong leader and demonstrates objectivity and the ability to focus on the underlying issues. His personal manner is calm and customer focussed and he is often asked to trouble shoot challenging situations.
Duncan is a technophile and a people person, who enjoys all things related to both technology and people. He usually finds it is all in the attitude. With the right attitude everything just works and issues are always resolved early.
Duncan has done a lot of work with IP Telephony /VoIP, especially with the open source pabx Asterisk and FreePBX and has shown they can be better than most commerical systems at a much lower cost.
Duncan has spent a lot of the last 7 years with Gravelroad developing economic models of companies, and statistical forecasting models using R. He enjoys new ways of doing things and the most recent modelling tools, Analytica, and Cubeplan.
A Wellingtonian through and through, he is married to Leone and they have 4 children. Duncan enjoys mucking around with his family. He also likes almost all exercise, especially playing, and watching rugby, running, cycling, and martial arts. He is strongly interested in motivation and spirituality, particularly Christianity.
Job Titles:
- Financial Analyst
- Business Economics Services Manager
"There is no extent to which man will not go to avoid the serious discipline of thinking." A quote Thomas Edison had beside his desk.
Edgar is a financial analyst with in-depth pricing and marketing expertise, providing advice to senior management and executives. He has extensive experience in financial modelling, cost analysis, business casing, business strategy, marketing decision making support, and product development. He brings to Gravelroad a balance of strategic thinking, economic analysis and pricing expertise with a particular focus on telecommunications and other utility industries. His strong analytical approach to solving problems combined with an intuitive business sense has given him a reputation for thought leadership amongst his peers.
Edgar has a background in marketing and financial analysis. He brings to Gravelroad a balance of strategic thinking, economic analysis and pricing expertise with a particular focus on telecommunication and other utility industries.
With over 20 years experience he has worked for companies in the telecommunications, electricity, forestry and chemical industries, providing advice to senior management and executives.
Building on his training as a research chemist, Edgar has a strong analytical mind and loves problem-solving in complex business environments. Early in his career he was trained by Shell NZ to be a financial analyst, and discovered the power of financial modelling to support successful businesses. He began working for Telecom NZ Ltd in the early 90's and thrived in the complex and fast changing telecommunications environment. He developed an in-depth knowledge of cost analysis, performance measurement and business economics and moved on to fulfil a number of marketing, product management and strategy roles, becoming Telecom's Group Pricing Manager.
In recent years he has been working as a consultant to infrastructure and utility providers.
Edgar moves easily from the big picture into the detail, enabling him to work out what is required to solve business problems. He knows what it takes to translate high level strategy into marketable and profitable products. He has extensive experience working with technical people from other disciplines to understand a business's economic costs and deliver technically sound solutions. He is energised by working with other people and is well respected by his peers.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive
- Executive Director of Gravelroad Consulting
"Vision without action is a daydream but action without vision is a nightmare."
Frank is an Executive Director of Gravelroad Consulting. With greater than 34 years experience in the information and communications technologies industry, in technical and management positions, Frank has good technical, commercial and customer relationship skills. A strategic thinker, who enjoys working on challenging problems and developing solutions that provide real business advantage, Frank has provided consultancy services to Federal, State and Local Government agencies on a range of assignments including strategic planning, policy development, technology advice, supply and demand analysis, feasibility studies, business case development, procurement and project management.
Beginning as a telecommunications technician in 1974 with Telecom Australia, Frank developed experience in the installation and maintenance of many types of information and communication systems, from a practical perspective. While working as a technician, Frank completed a Certificate in Electronics and Communications to complement his technician qualifications. In 1989, Frank was accepted into the Telstra Leadership Program where he undertook senior management training in-conjunction with the Southern Cross University. Post this program Frank successfully completed a Master of Business Administration degree.
All through his career, Frank has been involved in the technical and commercial aspects of telecommunications infrastructure development. As a technician Frank was involved in designing, installing, maintaining and project managing complex infrastructure projects such as the Northern Territory Government private voice and data communications network and the Tindal Airbase private voice and data communications network. From the mid 1980's Frank moved into Business Development which involved consulting with clients at senior levels in the Corporate and Government sectors to assist them achieve business outcomes through effective use of information and telecommunications technologies (ICT). Activities included mapping Customer business requirements, marrying these requirements to technology solutions and managing the implementation to ensure the Customers requirements were met.
Over his career, Frank has managed many teams either as direct reports or multi -functional project teams. These teams have ranged from small (2 people) to large (up to 100 people) with activities that have included significant change management in terms of cultural change, business direction change, systems change and human resource change; commercial management; product development, policy and strategy development; contract management and dispute resolution. In 2000 Frank joined the Queensland Department of State Development to assist them develop and implement strategies that developed new economy infrastructures such as ICT and in particular broadband communications. This involved working across the department and other government agencies including local government; educating the various industry and business development groups on the importance of ICT as an economic growth enabler and assist them develop appropriate policies and programs that encouraged the provision of improved ICT infrastructure within the State.
Frank joined Gravelroad (previously GDI) in 2004. During his time with Gravelroad Frank has provided expert advice to Government Ministers, Mayors and senior executives in the public and private sectors with regard to emerging trends in the telecommunications sector, technology evolution, emerging business models, next generation broadband development and their relationship to business and community benefit.
In a voluntary capacity, Frank performed as the Convenor of the Queensland Branch for the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) for a period of five years. Frank's personal characteristics include drive and energy with particular focus on challenge and delivering results. He has high interest in work that provides the opportunity for discovering, developing and presenting new ideas and concepts.
Frank's other interests include motor racing, travel and enjoying his children's entry into adulthood.
Heike's focus is on aspects of water management. Water is a resource without a substitute but many competing uses and stakeholders. Coming from the discipline of supply chain management, she is used to thinking in end-to-end systems, taking a pragmatic approach to short term versus long term impacts of strategic decisions and the trade-offs to be made around the allocation of critical resources. She brings a wealth of experience to the water issue, but no baggage since she has only recently elected to move into this new and challenging space. Heike has worked in senior roles in Europe and New Zealand for companies such as Hewlett Packard, Fletcher Challenge and New Zealand Post. She enjoys the development of long term strategies as much as their implementation. She is an experienced leader of change with a keen understanding of the varying needs of different stakeholder groups, the value of strong governance and measurable outcomes. In her experience the best outcomes are being achieved in environments that foster working partnerships between different stakeholder groups. Only when you establish upfront what the threats and opportunities for each group are, can you set a shared agenda. Transparency of decision making and communication are keys to success.
Over the last couple of years Heike has applied her skills in short term assignments for organisations such as Evergreen Packaging in the United States and Carter Holt Harvey in Australia. Her brief was to enable internal talent to deliver measurable outcomes under tight time lines through knowledge transfer, spanning all aspects from technical knowhow, to time and project management to personal communication and presentation skills. She has also done some volunteer work in Argentina for a small not for profit organisation.
At New Zealand Post she established a group wide Procurement function, up-skilling her team in the differences between input and outcome based supply arrangements, collaborative approaches to outsourcing and the development of robust performance measurement frameworks. In her role as leader of the Strategy and Innovation Team she was involved in mergers and acquisitions and the assessment of various innovation ideas and strategies for the group.
At Fletcher Challenge she led an end-to-end business re-engineering exercise for a $150m subsidiary, resulting in the re-creation of the company through shifting major paradigms. One of the most significant breakthroughs came, as the team realised that the company allowed for ‘waste' in its budgets. The elimination of ‘waste' in production processes, service delivery and project management was a major contributor in reducing the company's cost base by 22% over an 18 months period. Rigorous project prioritisation and resourcing, supported by strong governance reduced project delivery time frames while lifting project completion in full on time and within budget to above 90%.
John is non executive Director and Chairman of the Gravelroad Group Board.
After 20 years international experience at Director level in the steel and engineering industry he moved to Australia and worked as a consultant to the Commonwealth Government responsible for the review and restructure of Australia's Antarctic operations and for the Boral group assessing noncore operations following the takeover of BMG. He then set up his own engineering management business in Queensland. He sold this to New Zealand interests and joined Gibsons Consulting, becoming Managing Partner as this grew to be the largest Queensland based consulting group. He presided over the merger of Gibsons with the Citadel group, one of Australia's fastest growing private companies. John has some 25 years of professional business consulting experience.
Job Titles:
- Administrator
- Accounts Administration
Kylie is an experienced administrator with a bookkeeping background and six years experience as a successful small business owner. With this blend of professional and practical experience, Kylie works to keep accounts tidy, compliance up to date and provide timely reporting and information. Her strengths are attention to detail and applying a common sense approach to her work.
Underneath her quiet exterior is someone with a knowledge of all things Motorsport...which may explain why she's so driven!