Hugh Burbidge

Hugh is a Principal of Douglas Partners with over 30 years’ experience in the geotechnical and construction industry in UK, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Australia. Hugh joined Douglas Partners Sydney office in February 2011 and since October 2015, has been the Rock Mechanics section manager.

Hugh has a Bachelor of Science from the University of London and a Master’s of Science and a DIC from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London.

He has broad technical and project experience in geotechnical investigations, design and construction and construction monitoring work on a wide range of projects for foundations, earthworks, retaining structures, slope stability, tunnels and inner city basement excavations. Hugh has worked on all three sides of the industry as a geotechnical engineer, operations manager and resident engineer for consultant, contractor and client organizations and is experienced in interfacing with government departments, clients and other stakeholders. He has worked on many high-profile geotechnical investigation and construction projects including the UK’s Channel Tunnel, a 1.3 km long slurry wall, a 60 km road investigation in Indonesia and he worked for eight years as the Resident Engineer for a developer on two major shopping centre redevelopments of £350-400M value each. Hugh has also spent 10 years working in Hong Kong for one of the world’s largest foundation contractors as a geotechnical engineer and Operations Manager for investigation and piling. More recently, Hugh has been project manager and data manager for the Sydney Metro investigations, geotechnical project manager for the Sydney Cricket Ground Bradman, Noble and Messenger Stand Redevelopment investigation and construction, project manager for the Frieda River Feasibility Study (Papua New Guinea) and various Pacific Highway Upgrade geotechnical tender teams. He has been involved in a number of deep basement excavation projects adjacent to existing and future rail tunnels in the Sydney CBD.