Managing Director Of Springfield Land Corporation, Bob Sharpless Selected For Inclusion In The CEO Magazine

Bob Sharpless spoke to The CEO Magazine in an exclusive interview on transforming a major parcel of land into a thriving community

by Paris Brooks

(WireNews+Co) - Sydney, Australia - 29 January 2013

Some executives are responsible for a couple of hundred employees, maybe even a couple of thousand. Managing Director of Springfield Land Corporation (SLC) Bob Sharpless and his business partner Maha Sinnathamby look after the 28.5 square kilometres of residential and commercial development known as Greater Springfield.

“The project of Greater Springfield was always a very ambitious thing to take on,” Bob explains. “We basically bought 2,860 hectares of land and decided to build what most would call a ‘satellite city’ on the edge of Brisbane. The land had no infrastructure to it, and a project of this scale required an extensive number of approvals.”

Getting approval and building infrastructure to enable the project has been a challenging process for SLC. “One of the greatest challenges was extending the Centenary Highway,” Bob highlights, “which in the early days stopped at the Ipswich Motorway. So we ended up extending the Centenary Highway in two stages. The first stage was extended through to the Logan Motorway, and the second stage was from Logan Motorway through to Springfield. The second stage was pretty challenging because it had to be built through an existing military defence base called the Greenbank Army Base. The Department of Defence was not particularly thrilled at the prospect of having a road built through their defence base, so that took a lot of negotiation and perseverance to achieve that.

“We then got the approvals for the balance of the land, which required agreement from Ipswich City Council as well as the Queensland Government. We also had to have an act of parliament to validate the whole planning framework. That was unanimously passed through the Queensland Parliament, with all 89 parliamentarians voting for it. It is very unusual in politics for all 89 members of parliament to support a particular project of that nature. So from an infrastructure point of view, they were major achievements.”

The full editorial feature can be found here (http://www.theceomagazine.com.au/Springfield_Land_Corporation/Bob_Sharpless.pdf).

The CEO Magazine is Australia’s leading business magazine focused directly at high-level executives. The CEO Magazine is of unrivalled quality and has a hugely-influential readership of Australia's top businessmen and women. The CEO Magazine holds a prestigious partnership with a number of leading Australian airlines and can be seen in every Virgin and Qantas Business Lounge across Australia as well as all Hilton Hotels nationwide. The CEO Magazine also holds Australia's most prestigious awards night for high-level executives, the annual, Executive of the Year Awards. To find out more about The CEO Magazine go to http://www.TheCEOMagazine.com.au (http://www.theceomagazine.com.au).