"Our journey of growth continues, enhanced by our people policies together with our innovation and sustainability initiatives, to place us firmly at the forefront while enabling us to better meet the needs of our clients in the global communities in which we operate."

Clive Weeks
GHD Chairman

In our 80th year, GHD celebrates the vitality that makes us an enduring force, helping to create a better world.

Our strength is evidenced by the growth in staff numbers to over 6,500 and revenue forecasts being exceeded. This substantial growth is largely organic, and supplemented by several strategic mergers with a range of specialist service organisations.

We continue to open new offices. This year operations commenced in Canada, and GHD is now permanently located in 15 countries around the globe.

We are successfully making GHD a great place to work. The People section in this report highlights some of the initiatives taken, particularly with respect to leadership development.

GHD takes pride in its Innovations program, supported by the use of a customised technology platform, which facilitates global collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams. We have Innovation Champions in all our operations, and nearly 1,000 ideas have been submitted to date, with 20 having progressed to the funding stage.

An inter-office collaboration program involving our people in Beijing, Changsha, Kuala Lumpur and Manila to assist in the delivery of projects in Australia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is helping balance the workload across the company. Such collaboration is eliminating geographic boundaries and progressing the aim of the total integration of the GHD workforce around the globe.

The strong focus on sustainability continued with the establishment of the Sustainability Advisory Group that guides the implementation of GHD’s sustainability strategy. Key initiatives include the delivery of sustainability awareness training and the incorporation of project Sustainability Impact Assessments into our management procedures.

Advisory Groups for the Business School, Innovation and Technical Services were also established to provide strategic advice an guidance to the managers of these key initiatives.

Our journey of growth continues, enhanced by our people policies together with our innovation and sustainability initiatives, t place us firmly at the forefront while enabling us to better meet the needs of our clients in the global communities in which we operate.

Thank you to all our clients for your continued support throughout the year and we look forward to working with you to meet your future project needs. Thank you also to my fellow directors, and all management and staff for making 2008 yet another milestone for GHD – truly an enduring force in its 80th year.

Clive Weeks
Chairman

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT