Public to Private: my journey so far

In a few weeks, I’ll be celebrating the one-year anniversary of my transition from life as a council planner to private practice. I say celebrate, because it was a huge step in my career and a significant piece of my own personal and professional development journey after 12 years in local government. I took some time to reflect on the move, what I’ve learned from the outside looking back in, and how the move has helped my professional development.

Now, I’m not going to take sides in the cliché “public v private” debate, that’s old and depending on which side of the table you’re sitting at, opinions won’t be challenged easily. However, my experience over the past 12 months have highlighted some key differences between working life in the two sectors.

I’ve found that in the private sector, the job satisfaction comes from immersing yourself in interesting work, delivering results, and making genuine connections. A healthy mix of local, regional and state development, and everything from hospitals to freight terminals, golf courses and heritage homes is the spice of life. Achieving great outcomes for the client is a relentless task, but getting those results and the relationships you build along the way are worth the effort. Being able to get out in the industry and develop good working relationships is a highlight. The industry drinks, Friday afternoon lawn bowls and paid Christmas parties make up for the rigour of design coordination meetings, SDRPs and weekly billing cycles.

For council planning, job satisfaction is a little harder to come by. Precariously balancing the interests of the parties involved in a DA is a thankless and challenging task. Addressing the desires of the applicant, the neighbours, the public, councillors, referral bodies, local heritage societies, local action groups, and Karen from two suburbs over, against the integrity of the controls, and the reasonableness of the proposal. How do you please all of these stakeholders? The simple answer is you rarely can, and I don’t think there is enough appreciation of this from the private sector. Those who haven’t done Council work really can’t appreciate that struggle. And don’t get me started on duty.

I reviewed around a thousand DAs in my time at council and waded through my fair share of inconsistent and poorly documented applications: it’s an arduous task with questionable GFA plans and suspicious room numbers on doors even though “it’s not a boarding house”. The phone never stops ringing. Then there’s the dream applications; the ones that were put together succinctly, skilfully designed, and well documented. They make council’s job easy and they’re proposals you can really get behind. Getting these DAs over the line with the least resistance delivers a good dose of job satisfaction for all involved. Having that insight as a council planner gave me a taste of that frustration, and as a consultant I want to deliver projects with as little back and forth as possible for our clients … and also for my own sanity.

Another key difference is the amount of investment in your professional development. It’s hard to blame Council for their dwindling training budgets; PIA membership is impossible to get funding for, let alone CPD courses. The mentoring I was lucky enough to receive at Council was invaluable and I formed life-long friendships with those colleagues, but the budget for technical training just wasn’t available. The technical training in the private sector is exceptional. Every other week an industry professional comes in for a crash course and Q&A. It costs nothing, and we return the favour by deciphering the various acronyms that drive our profession – SEPPs, LSPSs and unfortunately, RFIs.

All in all, I’ve learned that there’s challenges and hard work required in every corner of the industry. I would encourage all my peers to experience life on both sides of the divide; it makes for a well-rounded planner and having that broad experience brings the divide a little closer. I’m interested to hear from others who have made the switch in either direction; what were the key differences for you?

Asher Richardson