AITPM Member Profile - Damien Bitzios
Damien Bitzios
M ENG, B ENG (HONS), FIEAUST, FAITPM, RPEQ
I have worked mostly in the private sector over my 27 years in the industry with the last 16 as Director of Bitzios Consulting. The projects I have worked on have taken me across the globe and I have been very fortunate to be exposed to the full range of traffic, modelling, planning, safety and policy aspects our profession covers.Damien Bitzios
M ENG, B ENG (HONS), FIEAUST, FAITPM, RPEQ
What is your current role?
Director, Bitzios Consulting
What first attracted you to get involved in the transport industry?
Social sciences along with maths/physics have always interested me. Traffic engineering and transport planning provided the unique opportunity to mix the two while doing what engineers do best: use innovation to solve challenging problems.
Could you explain some key opportunities in your career and how they contributed to your development?
Looking back I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Two of the consultancies I worked for earlier in my career were just starting to build their traffic and transport teams. Getting in on the ground floor meant that I got exposed to very challenging projects. With very little technical guidance, I had no choice but to dig in and ‘work it out’ myself; and quickly. My attitude, skills and experience developed rapidly through this period and in hindsight provided the foundation for me to build Bitzios Consulting into what it is today.
What has been/will be your involvement with AITPM?
I have been on the QLD branch committee from time to time over the past couple of decades and Bitzios Consulting is a long-term state branch sponsor.
What has been a memorable moment in your career?
After 27 years it’s really difficult to narrow this down to one moment. A few that spring to mind include managing and writing the Gold Coast Light Rail Feasibility Study (and to finally see the project a resounding success), implementing cutting edge fuzzy logic ramp meter algorithms in models for the I-95 in Florida and presenting my findings for Doha Expressway improvements to the Prime Minister of Qatar. If I had to choose, the most memorable was being given 48 hours to develop, model and present to the LTA chairman a solution to a really tricky pinch point capacity issue along the Central Expressway in Singapore. This experience was incredibly stressful but finally ‘cracking’ the solution in the early hours of the morning, clearly communicating its merits, having it acknowledged by a room full of experts and then having it built within 12 months was certainly memorable.
What are your personal and/or professional career plans for the future?
To continue to learn and be challenged both professionally and in my health/fitness pursuits. I find myself though increasingly shifting my focus to encouraging our next generation of engineers and planners at Bitzios Consulting to really think through the content of what they are providing to our clients and how they are delivering it.
Do you have any advice you would like to share to professionals in the transport/traffic industry?
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I am increasingly concerned about ‘style over substance’ trend leaking into our industry and the associated superficial assessments of transport problems or initiatives. To remain credible as specialists in traffic and transport, we need to ensure that fundamental economic and engineering principles underpin our decisions. To do that, more in our industry need to know what these principles are and be afforded the time stop and think through their application.