People Make Pensar

We’re proud of our staff retention and believe it speaks volumes about the Pensar work culture. We work hard to attract good people. We then guide, support, encourage and challenge them to do great work and pursue their personal and career goals.

As a highly experienced project manager, Laura is inspired by complex multidisciplinary projects and the opportunity to motivate and mentor engineering undergrads and graduates in her team.  Having completed a Bachelor of Industrial Process Engineering in Colombia, the opportunity arose to do a Masters of Project Management at QUT in Brisbane.  While delivering water infrastructure projects across South East Queensland, she discovered Pensar and shortly after sending in her resume started in a site engineer role. She quickly progressed to project engineer followed by her current role of project manager due to her attention to detail through to her exceptional project expectations and safety performance.

In early 2022, Laura took maternity leave for 7 months before returning to work part time enabling her to balance her career and young family. She stayed in contact with her team and across the status of her projects during her leave period and is now back to working full time with the flexibility of working from home when needed.  Laura is driven to do better everyday and finds it rewarding when receiving positive feedback from clients especially when it leads to the opportunity of delivering future projects for them. She credits Pensar’s leadership team for their support of her professional goals and career development. Laura looks forward to future critical water infrastructure projects and exceeding clients’ delivery expectations across the many opportunities presented as Pensar continues to grow.   

Having grown up in Glasgow Scotland dreaming of becoming a professional football player, Matty left school at 15 to pursue his passion.  Learning his trade as a goalkeeper with Celtic in the Scottish Premier League he then moved onto Albion Rovers making his senior competitive debut at the age of 16. He continued to play at a high level in Scotland before moving to Australia in 2013.

Matty first started with Pensar in 2015 delivering electrical infrastructure projects including traffic signals and associated civil construction works on the Moreton Bay Rail Link and Gold Coast Light Rail Stage 2. He briefly left Pensar in 2018 to further advance his fibre optic cable experience returning to Pensar in 2019 and more recently moving into Pensar’s utility engineering and management team. 

No two days are ever the same due to the diversity of project locations and variety in the scope of works he uncovers.  Along with positive service location, Matty’s subsurface experience extends across desktop, site, and post works investigations, with the assistance of surface feature survey, electronic detection, EML and GPR, hydro excavation and 3D modelling documentation and development. He is looking forward to further growing the Pensar subsurface capability and the new opportunities it will bring.

Football remains close to Matty’s heart with him currently playing and coaching at Peninsula Power in Queensland’s National Premier League, along with recently being part of the goalkeeping coaching staff for the NPL Women’s Select Squad against the Brisbane Roar.

Commencing as an graduate engineer with Pensar, Nabil was exposed to several water and wastewater projects. In his first 12 months, he had the opportunity to work on a variety of design and construction projects, focusing on infrastructure upgrade works, across extensive water networks, including treatment plants and pump stations. He is now in a project engineer role focusing on sustaining infrastructure works. 

Nabil completed his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, quickly realising he was passionate about the water and wastewater projects he was exposed to as part of his studies.  His experience at Pensar has provided him the opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary team, who are highly experienced across a range of specialisations. Nabil credits the exceptional support and mentorship from the Pensar team in allowing him to enhance both his technical engineering and project management skills. One of the highlights of his role is his exposure to the whole project cycle, from design and planning to construction. He believes this offers a diverse learning experience, and the ability to examine how engineering designs are created and realised.

Trent is Pensar’s longest serving employee, having joined the company as a 23 year old labourer 18 years ago. He has seen a lot of change within the company and the industry, with the biggest change in safety, noting that the industry is certainly in a much safer space now.

Over the years, Trent has enjoyed working with younger members of the team as they grow into varying roles, developing and increasing their skills. Some coming straight from school via work experience, progressing from labourer to tradesman to leading hand. He believes the defining characteristic of Pensar is the focus on their people. There is genuine care.

Troy started his career at Pensar in 2006 as a plumber and through perseverance and focus has worked his way up through the business into his current position as a Construction Manager, focusing on water and wastewater. Troy is experienced in the development of high performing teams having won a gold medal at the Athen’s Olympics and a bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics, as a celebrated international hockey player and member of Australia’s men's hockey team, the Kookaburras.  

He believes that there are parallels between elite sport and the success in business everywhere, from accountability and sacrifice to attention to detail and teamwork.  

Joe has been with Pensar for two years commencing as an undergraduate engineer and has recently moved into a site engineer role. He has had many opportunities to gain valuable and practical onsite experience across our sites, specialising in water infrastructure. As someone who is passionate about continuous learning and development, he believes that being a part of the supportive team at Pensar has enabled him to develop as an engineer. Joe is gaining valuable project management skills, while still being exposed to a variety of technical engineering facets. 

In his role to date, he has worked on regionally located projects in Central Queensland, and has been a valued member of the delivery teams working for local governments, water authorities and the defence sector. He is very excited about what lies ahead at Pensar, across new and diverse projects, and the many possibilities to further enhance his knowledge and skills.

Sophie has been with Pensar for almost 14 years and during this time has seen the company grow in size across its people, delivery capabilities and technical expertise. 

At the completion of university, Sophie started with Pensar in a receptionist role and has progressed within the company across varying role opportunities to her current position as Facilities and Finance Manager. She feels very fortunate to have an amazingly supportive Manager and Managing Director who were flexible with her recent maternity leave and returning to work journey.  The process was pressure free with open lines of communication, ensuring that she was comfortable at each step. Sophie now balances her work life schedule with three days in the office and two days working from home.  She looks forward to the varied and new opportunities at Pensar in the coming years.