On 13 August, CIBSE ANZ brought together building services engineers from across Australia and New Zealand for Lessons Learnt the Hard Way, our flagship technical seminar for 2026. Hosted across six venues in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Auckland and Christchurch — with thanks to Aurecon for opening their offices as venue partner — the day combined local, in-person panel discussions with a live hybrid broadcast, giving attendees the option to join in person or online and earn up to seven hours of CPD.
Nine speakers shared candid, hard-won insights from real projects: Pratik Shrestha, Mark Davie, Rohit Sharma, Chris Arkins, Lucy Cole, Chris Bird, Steve Hennessy, Mark Crawford and Chris Killoran, joined by local panellists at each venue who brought a regional lens to the discussion.
A theme of teamwork and communication
If there was one common takeaway from almost every session, it was this: technical expertise gets a project to the table, but soft skills get it delivered. Speaker after speaker pointed to communication — with clients, contractors, and across disciplines — as the difference between a project that runs smoothly and one that doesn't.
As our Seminar Chair, Jen Elias reflected:
"A theme running through the day was teamwork and how important it is to build a strong team culture with open communication in averting problems before they materialise (and in fixing issues once they're identified!!). In many cases, communication – with clients, contractors, and across disciplines – was the difference between a project that runs smoothly and one that doesn't. It was a timely reminder that the 'hard way' lessons in engineering are rarely about the engineering alone."
Soft Landings Workshop
A highlight of the day was the Soft Landings Workshop, run in parallel across all six venues. In his keynote, Steve Hennessy of WT Partnership introduced the Soft Landings framework — a collaborative approach to delivering better-performing buildings through respect, openness and extended aftercare — walking attendees through its five stages from inception to long-term aftercare, and sharing candid examples of where it had been reduced to a box-ticking exercise rather than embedded properly into delivery.
In Sydney, the workshop that followed, participants examined the practical barriers of implementation: the adversarial culture that can make people reluctant to speak up, competing priorities between funders, tenants and project teams, and the commercial pressures that can work against good long-term outcomes. Participants explored how early, transparent communication, a dedicated facilitator and genuine senior sponsorship can help projects have the "hard conversations" sooner rather than later — and how creating safe spaces for feedback builds the trust needed for issues to surface before they become expensive problems.
Similar workshops were held in Adelaide, Auckland, Christchurch, Melbourne and Perth and the ideas gathered across all six venues, will directly inform the revised Soft Landings guidance CIBSE is planning to develop. Thank you to everyone who took part and contributed so openly.
The Soft Landings presentation and workshop recordings will be made available to listen to, together with other presentations and panel discussions from the seminar: CPD Webinars
Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive.
"Would love to make this a regular fixture - lessons learned gets so devalued and lost at the end of projects" - Anonymous, Auckland
100% of participants who provided feedback said they would recommend this seminar to a colleague.
Thank you
None of this would have been possible without our Gold Sponsors:
- Seber Recruitment — specialist recruiters for Building Services and Civil & Structural engineering consultancies across Australia.
- Optergy — delivering a unified smart building platform that gives building owners and operators greater visibility, control and insight to improve building performance, energy efficiency and long-term asset value.
Thank you also to our venue partner Aurecon, our chapter chairs, seminar advisory committee, and AV leads across all six locations, our speakers and panellists for sharing their lessons so generously, and every attendee who joined us to make the day such a success.
We look forward to seeing you at the next CIBSE ANZ event.
Watch the Independent Perspective Presentations
More session recordings will be made available over the coming month
See the many lessons shared by speakers and panellists via our LinkedIn campaign, #LessonsLearnttheHardWay