Shamus Wallace

Background

About Shamus Wallace

I enjoy hard work, and I gravitate to understanding and resolving challenges that make work hard. I value loyalty, humility and emotional intelligence. I want to be able to contribute to work being easier and more enjoyable for everyone. I strive to develop a sense of achievement, for myself and for those around me. I grew up loving geography. I’m an Engineering Geologist according to my degree. My career started in coal exploration, before I moved on to soil and rocks, contaminated land, retaining walls and residential development in Nelson. My wife and I travelled around the world, visiting more than 50 countries, before landing back in Christchurch. Dynamic movements of the seemingly simple Canterbury landscape in 2010/2011 shaped my career since then. I’ve been with T+T for 20 years. During that time, I’ve moved from working with rocks to working with people. I managed a massive team of 400 consultants from across NZ and the world that helped Canterbury recover from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence in 2010/2011. Together we won an ACENZ Gold Award of Excellence in 2012. I was also named ACENZ Future Leader. We spent a lot of time interacting with members of the community when they were in their most emotional and vulnerable states – many had suffered significant damage to their homes, their ‘castles’. Experiencing these personalities, emotions, feelings, and reactions definitely shaped my desire to help, to educate, inform, and influence, to make complex situations and environments simple so that it is easier – easier to understand, easier to communicate, easier to work, and easier to feel fulfilled. Since then, I’ve held a management and then the leadership role of the Geotechnical Discipline, the largest team of geotechnical professionals in (and across) NZ, and most recently held a leadership role in creating a great experiences in the workplace across TTGroup. Working with soil and rocks was challenging – we didn’t always know what we were dealing with - we had to infer what was between discrete points. Working with people is similar. It is unpredictable. It’s difficult to plan and predict the outcomes. You need skills in negotiation, emotion, patience. It can be frustrating and immensely gratifying. I sometimes hate it, I often love it. It’s a journey I’m continuing. I’m now Operations Director for TTNZ. This leadership role is about collaboration, to enable smooth and efficient operations across a multidisciplinary business of more than people. To deliver the best collective workplace experience we can for each of them.