Engineer Henry Stone joined Consult Australia’s Future Leaders Program in 2024. Six months later, he was part of the winning team behind a digital prototype that could help governments protect infrastructure from climate-fuelled disasters.

When Henry, Senior Structural Engineer with Northrop Consulting Engineers, joined the 2024 Consult Australia Future Leaders Program, the opportunity to work across disciplines, sharpen his leadership skills and think big-picture drew him in.

“Engineers can be laser-focused on their technical expertise. The Future Leaders Program forces participants to think at a higher level about leadership, teamwork and impact,” he says.

Over the six-month program, participants attend workshops and collaborate on joint projects designed to stretch their skills and expand their networks.

Henry joined forces with Mary Hadjiangeli (SMEC), Brandon Sayasane (Arcadis) and Jisun Chang (Arup) to establish Team FORTIFY – short for Framework for Optimised Resilience and Targeted Infrastructure Funding Yields.

FORTIFY’s project brief, set by Infrastructure Australia, was deceptively simple: design a tool that helps decision-makers quickly assess which infrastructure assets are most at risk from natural disasters and direct funding accordingly.

A practical framework for a $73 billion problem

The cost of natural disasters in Australia keeps climbing. Deloitte forecasts the figure as $73 billion a year by 2060. While resilience is embedded in the national Infrastructure Policy Statement, governments still lack practical tools to translate policy ambition into targeted investment.

“Infrastructure Australia came to us with a question: How can government ministers and senior advisers make rapid decisions on funding allocation to maximise the resilience of the infrastructure network to natural disasters?” Henry says.

What FORTIFY delivered – after more than 200 hours of work, multiple late-night collaborations and “a few sacrificed weekends” – was a scalable digital framework and a risk assessment methodology built for impact.

FORTIFY’s project, outlined in the Climate Change Risk & Resilience Assessment for Nationally Significant Infrastructure report, took out both the Judges’ Award and the People’s Choice Award at the 2025 Consult Australia Awards for Excellence.

“Leadership, trust and judgment – those can’t be replaced.
That’s why programs like this matter. It’s called the Future Leaders Program for a reason.”

- Henry Stone, Senior Structural Engineer, Northrop Consulting Engineers

A simple tool with powerful potential

FORTIFY’s proposed solution prioritises funding based on asset vulnerability and geographic risk.

“We took an approach that was simple, fast to implement and based on existing digital infrastructure tools developed overseas.” Other countries, notably Japan and the United States, have similar frameworks. “In Australia, the data is very disjointed. That was one of our biggest challenges and why we opted for simplicity first.”

The solution proposes a user-friendly metric dubbed the “FortiFactor”. This overlays geospatial risk data, such as flood zones or bushfire corridors, onto infrastructure types like substations, bridges and transport hubs. “If you know where an asset is, and you know what hazard zones it falls into, you can begin to quantify risk,” Henry explains.

The FortiFactor is calculated using three inputs:

• Exposure – the likelihood of a hazard occurring in the asset’s location
• Vulnerability – the sensitivity of the asset to that hazard
• Impact – the consequence to the community if the asset fails.

Using FORTIFY’s method, the Sydney Harbour Bridge scores a 10 for heatwaves, 8 for tsunami risk and 6 for flooding – highlighting its vulnerability to a warming climate and coastal surge.

FORTIFY’s framework also considers the broader social and cultural impacts of disaster. This includes recognising how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, often invulnerable locations with deep cultural ties to land, experience disproportionate disruption.

With FORTIFY’s prototype, the decision to invest becomes less about guesswork and more about evidence. As Consult Australia continues to champion a Digital by Default future, FORTIFY offers a practical and actionable example of what that looks like.

Shaping the careers of tomorrow

Henry’s career spans complex, high-stakes structural engineering in both the UK and Australia. Now leading multi-million-dollar projects and mentoring junior staff, Henry believes programs like Consult Australia’s Future Leaders Program are essential – not just for technical skills but “mindset shifts”.

“As AI and automation evolve, the technical side of engineering will change,” he says. “But leadership, trust and judgment – those can’t be replaced. That’s why programs like this matter. It’s called the Future Leaders Program for a reason.”