October 2026
Five insights with Proterra Group
When is engineering the easy bit? Could regional competitors share scarce expertise? And what changes when distance is part of the job? Five insights from Proterra Group CEO Paul Clayton.
Proterra Group has been supporting and strengthening regional and remote communities, partnering with local governments and private-sector organisations across civil engineering, waste management and major infrastructure project delivery.
1. What does your firm do brilliantly that people don’t know enough about?
Our focus on work-life balance, a positive and friendly workplace culture and authenticity in all client interactions creates the best foundation for us to enjoy coming to work and for us to quickly become a trusted advisor to our clients. I think we do this brilliantly! It’s the little things that matter every day, including great benefits for our employees and our willingness to travel to see our clients face-to-face regardless of location. Combine this with a professional, multi-disciplinary team and it’s a formula that works well for us.
2. What’s something clients think is simple that really isn’t?
What often surprises clients is that successful infrastructure delivery is rarely determined by the engineering alone. Designing a road, water treatment plant, bridge, or community facility may appear straightforward when viewed as a set of drawings and specifications. But behind every project sits a complex web of stakeholder engagement, approvals, environmental considerations, utility coordination, procurement, funding, risk management, contractor performance and community expectations. Bringing all of those moving parts together makes project management both challenging and essential.
Complexity can be amplified when projects are delivered across large geographic areas, often with limited contractor and specialist resources. The real challenge is balancing scope, cost, schedule, quality, safety, and stakeholder expectations in these circumstances.
I think most of our clients understand these challenges and generally don’t underestimate them. But infrastructure project management and regional asset management are not as simple as they sometimes seem.
3. If you could change one thing about how our industry works, what would it be?
Finding professional staff to live and work in regional and remote areas can be a challenge that is felt more acutely, perhaps, than for larger metropolitan areas and cities.
I think there could be opportunity for our industry to develop more sophisticated consultancy partnership models for regional and remote areas where the relatively few ‘local’ professionals are spread across multiple smaller service-delivery businesses (e.g. scientists or engineers or infrastructure project managers). Competing for regionally based resources, especially in specialist professional disciplines, is a shared challenge that has, perhaps, a shared solution.
4. What’s keeping you busy that wasn’t on your radar three years ago?
Three years ago, artificial intelligence was not on our radar at all. Today, it is potentially one of the most significant developments shaping how businesses operate. As a result, a significant amount of our time is now focused on understanding how to safely harness AI’s potential in a way that creates value without compromising trust, accountability, or cybersecurity.
Our effort at the moment is directed towards establishing the right foundations for responsible AI adoption, including developing clear ethical AI use policies, defining governance structures, and putting safeguards in place to ensure transparency, privacy, security and appropriate human oversight. The technology is evolving rapidly, and our challenge is not simply adopting AI, but doing so in a way that aligns with our organisational values, regulatory obligations and community expectations.
5. What’s something about your firm we’d never learn online?
Probably just how deeply public works runs through our business. Proterra Group has a long-standing positive relationship with the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA). Proterra Group’s owner, Sean Rice, is the current President of IPWEA Queensland and Northern Territory. If you knew to look, I guess you might discover Sean’s association with IPWEA with some online detective work, but it’s not something that’s immediately obvious. We have a proud history of assisting local governments in regional and remote Australia with their management of public assets, and Sean has had this at his core for the best part of two decades.