Friday 15th January 2021 marked the official 30th anniversary for STA Consulting Engineers – and 3 decades of engineering excellence. To remain successful in business for that long, there is an overwhelming and ongoing commitment to deliver a competitive, quality service to the market. A service that adapts to changing industry conditions and market needs, remaining relevant and valuable to the customers we serve.
There are three key aspects of the business that have underpinned its success over these past three decades and I’d like to reflect on each a little further. They are: our people, our engineering capability, and our approach to innovation.
When mentioning STA people, we really must begin with the two people who started it all. It was STA’s founders Justin and Simone who had the vision, courage and commitment to embark on such a journey 30 years ago – and who continue to strive to do things better. Without this passion STA would not be where it is today.
The backbone of STA as a service organisation are truly our valued employees. There are so many thank yous that need to be said for the hard work, the many years of service and continued dedication as we strive for engineering excellence. We have come a long way together and the contribution of many individual efforts have continued to inspire us and encouraged all to do better.
Specifically we also acknowledge past employees, as they too have been part of the journey and have played a significant role in who we are and what we offer.
If you weren’t aware, STA stands for Soil Test Australia. This is where it began for STA 30 years ago – a focus on offering quality, reliable soil testing services to the residential market. Over time the business realised opportunities to grow into new complementary engineering service areas.
When STA commenced business in 1991, the company was known as Soil Test Australia. Over time this was shortened to STA. As the name suggests, we were focussed on soil testing and geotechnical services like slope stability. We also offered foundation design and engineering services, given the interconnectedness between these two services. STA also provided engineering inspections from the outset.
13 years later, STA expanded its engineering capability to include a new structural engineering department. Initially focussed on residential, over time the team grew into commercial engineering as well.
Another 3 years later, STA opened a Hydraulics Engineering department as another complimentary service to the residential construction sector.
Over the last decade, we’ve continued to expand and refine our service offering across our 6 engineering service areas:
Over the decades, STA has fostered a culture of innovation, with our co-founder Justin leading from the front. Justin always sees ways to further improve, optimise and adapt existing services, processes and systems for better customer and business outcomes. Here are a few highlights:
Over the past 30 years, we’ve worked on over half a million projects across residential and commercial sectors. We carefully accumulated millions of data points over this time on soil and weather conditions and now use this to power our proprietary system.
We developed our own proprietary system (and continue to build on it) that leverages accumulated site condition data and combines it with smart algorithms, models and design tools to optimise site classifications, provide smarter insights and enable better building engineering designs.
We’ve continued to expand and adapt our engineering design offerings to meet modern construction techniques as they evolve and as new methods are taken up by the market, such as plastic void formers, screw piles, modular techniques and more.
We developed a proprietary Building Inspections App that not only makes the inspections process much more efficient and accurate, but facilitates Live Notifications to clients from site (via SMS, email).
We continue to review and expand the breadth of services offered, in conjunction with the needs of our customers.
We maintain close ties to regulatory, standards and industry associations to ensure we are at the forefront of design and compliance requirements in construction engineering.
We are developing regional partnerships and pursuing new business models to facilitate a broader service offering in new areas/regions.
After 30 years the future remains bright for STA. With the trust of our clients and the support of our team, we have built increased levels of resilience and we have developed market leading products and services for our customers which will continue to differentiate what we do well into the future. What has remained unchanged from 30 years ago is our focus on engineering excellence in all that we do.
I am sure you will join with me in acknowledging the Business heritage – who would have thought the little family business which started under a house in Greenslopes could grow to deliver opportunities for us all over that extended time – Happy 30th to all our customers and the whole STA family.
