Phillips chaired GHD's board between 1999 and 2002 and transformed the company during his time in charge.
During the period the company built up its presence in New Zealand, the Philippines, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
That vision paid off as GHD grew from $130 million turnover and 1100 employees in 1999 to 11,000 people and annual revenue of $2.3 billion in 2022.
John Phillips
Phillips began his career as a structural engineer with the Australian government working on rocket launching facilities at Woomera, the design foundations for several Reserve Bank buildings and the international terminals at Tullamarine and Mascot.
Believing foundation engineering to be the most challenging aspect of his work Phillips returned to university to complete a Master's degree in soil mechanics.
He joined GHD in Melbourne in 1967 and worked on the largest dam project GHD had completed at the time, the Bungul Dam in Victoria.
Phillips relocated to Perth in 1979 with his family to work on five dams for the Worsley Alumina refinery near Collie.
At the time relatively there had been relatively few tailings dams built in Australia, so Phillips took a study tour to Germany and the US to learn more.
He brought back key learnings that informed the successful delivery of the project and led to GHD taking out two dam building patents.
The Worsley Alumina project would go on to win two engineering awards and Phillips became an authority on tailings dams. Over a 40-year career he would work in 11 countries on almost 100 major tailings dam, 20 major water dams and three dams built into the sea.
Phillips was sought out as an expert to advise on dam collapses around the world, including the Opuha Dam in New Zealand.
After stepping down as chairman Phillips he continued working in GHD's Dams & Tailings Team in Western Australia until shortly before his death.
