Dr Brett Thiele spent his entire career focusing on the tiniest details. But a costly dispute taught him the value of understanding when you’re outside your area of expertise.
This article was originally published in the February 2025 issue of create.
It was 2010. Queensland had been hit by major floods. I was in my late 30s and had started my own business, which had just been awarded a $2 million project to repair flood-damaged roads in Central Queensland.
The particulars of the contract meant that construction had to occur during the wet season. We raised with the client that the pavement and seal designs were not suitable for construction at that time of the year, and presented alternatives which the client rejected.
Subsequent heavy rain led to significant damage to the completed work. The client said we hadn’t protected the works, even though the road was known to inundate. We made a claim against the client under the Building and Construction Industry Payments Act (BCIPA) for the cost of rectification.
I assembled a team to put the claim together, and had both engineering and legal representation. But I was so focused on the engineering aspects that I failed to understand the legal nuance around how claims are constructed. This ultimately cost the business $250,000.
Our claim was based on three reasons why we should be reimbursed by the client. For me as an engineer, it was perfectly obvious that any one of those reasons would have resulted in the same outcome, and so we would be entitled to be paid. But I didn’t appreciate that the BCIPA adjudicator was a legal professional, not an engineer.
While we had proven to him that two of the three reasons were true, we had failed to prove the third. Because we had failed to articulate in our claim that each of these tranches individually would have led to the end result, the adjudicator awarded us nothing.
When I reread the conversations we had with the legal advisors, I realised we hadn’t structured our claim in line with their advice. As a small business, we had to write it ourselves, but this led to a significant financial blow to the business.
At the time, I had two young kids aged two and four, and $250,000 felt like $50 million.
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New perspective
I was angry and sulked afterwards. But my youngest daughter brought me out of it. She had been given a book of nursery rhymes and asked me to read one.
I opened the book to a rhyme I’ve since memorised: “A wise old owl lived in an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Now, why can’t we all be like that old bird?”
The answer was staring up at me. Stop talking, stop thinking about what you’re going to say next, and take the time to reflect on the full meaning of what someone is saying.
Active listening is a core skill of any leader, manager or anyone trying to work in a collaborative environment. Don’t assume that, because you’ve heard something, you understand it. You need to reflect and absorb the nuance. It’s not an easy skill to master, and it’s one I still work on today. This might sound basic to some, but many don’t even consider it.
I’m now a consultant and constantly advise clients to listen. I like to think what I learned from my mistake has saved others from doing the same.
So, while it was a very expensive lesson to learn, it has made me a better engineer, leader and person. If it hadn’t been such a costly mistake, the nursery rhyme would’ve been just another bedtime story.
Brett’s top tips
- Understand the risks that belong to you and take steps to mitigate them.
- Make sure you truly understand the nuances of the advice you’re given.
- Don’t assume that, because you’ve heard something, you understand what it means.
Dr Brett Thiele FIEAust CPEng is the Executive Director – Infrastructure at RP Infrastructure, and Chair of the Engineers Australia College of Leadership and Management.
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Thanks for sharing your story and experience.
Hi, my similar experience was with a Judge in a small claims court. it was obvious to me that a telecoms cable installation was not complete as 2m were exposed along the footpath. But the supplier said it was working and the J accepted that constituted completion. In retrospect I should have submitted ‘expert’ testimony to verify what was glaringly obvious to me
Graeme W