Barry Watkins
Director
Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) Honours, University of Adelaide
Master of Engineering (Civil), University of Newcastle
Master of Business Administration, La Trobe University
Barry leads Kalimena’s transport practice, specialising in public transport.
Barry leads Kalimena’s transport practice, specialising in public transportation. He brings over 25 years’ experience developing urban transport infrastructure and service solutions throughout New Zealand, Australia and internationally.
Barry has comprehensive expertise on matters relating to the planning, design, operation, management and policy aspects of modern transport systems.
Barry approaches each project with fresh eyes, seeking to first understand the relationship between the development of transport systems and sustainable urban development. He is motivated by the desire to deliver positive outcomes that leverage this relationship to create successful and vibrant communities.
Key Projects
Let’s Get Wellington Moving: Mass Rapid Transit Project – Business Case Leader. Client-side leader of the Indicative Business Case process, guiding and reshaping the project to adapt to emerging challenges around climate change, housing affordability and resilience.
Let’s Get Wellington Moving – Programme Integration, including Economics and Carbon Lead.
Abuja Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project. Technical leadership to an international consulting team, for the planning and design of a 35km BRT system linking Nigeria’s capital city with the neighbouring Nasarawa State.
Gaborone Metropolitan Public Transport System. Led the design of a proposed modern, multi-tier public transport system for Botswana’s capital city.
Assurance Review services and leadership to Infrastructure NSW on transport projects throughout Greater Sydney.
Specialist advisory for rapid transit project development including the Western Sydney Rapid Bus Project, Southern Sunshine Coast Public Transport Strategy, TransJakarta BRT Improvement Program, the Canberra Capital Metro Light Rail and the Al Ain BRT Planning Transportation Study.
City-wide public transport strategy development in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Wellington, Darwin
Key Values
Barry is passionate about helping cities to grow and adapt through considered investments in transport and mobility systems. He brings the ability to set bold future visions, while understanding the pragmatic decisions and trade-offs needed to deliver them. Knowing that although every city is uniquely different, he specialises in guiding the right investments, in the right place, at the tight time.
Digging deeper
In a career that has spanned the public sector, consulting and independent client-side advisory, Barry understands the different ways that clients may need support.
“The work I do is incredibly varied and includes developing opportunities to reshape a city, finding better ways to deliver services, providing surety on investment decisions, or helping organisations respond to a crisis.
Every client is different, and so is each project. Whether I’m responding to a brief or discussing an opportunity, I’m always aware that behind it is someone asking for help to get their own job done. Ultimately, my clients aren’t organisations, they are the people working in them and I enjoy helping them achieve the outcomes they need.
A large part of what I do is bringing ideas and learnings from different places to help inspire and inform clients as to what might be possible for them. At the same time, I’m always looking to understand what made a project successful in one city, or why it failed in another and what my clients can learn from that.
This is why I love working internationally, as every new city or country that I work in challenges me to see the world through different eyes. Solutions and practices that we take for granted need to be broken down and rethought. In designing transit systems in the developing world, I’ve had to break down every component and ask the question ‘will that work here?’.”
More of the team:
