Industry Leaders EP11 with James Rosenwax

Seton Walsh-Rose sits down with James Rosenwax — Managing Director of Buildings & Places for Australia and New Zealand at AECOM, and a former Regional Director for NSW and ACT. James is a landscape architect by training who, over 30 years, rose from a small planning practice absorbed into AECOM to leading a business of around 650 engineers across one of the world’s largest infrastructure firms.

It’s a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually takes to grow a career and a capability: why James now calls leadership his profession, the 10-year rule for mastering a trade before the people work begins, how to find your real strengths, and why he’s never been more excited about the built environment — with AI poised to free engineers to do their most creative work, an infrastructure deficit the world can’t yet build fast enough to meet, and a frank read on the cost of building and the outlook across Australia and New Zealand.

Episode Chapters

• 00:11 Welcome & Introduction
• 00:43 Who is James / AECOM
• 01:18 From Small Practice to Global Enterprise
• 01:53 Small vs Big: Agility vs Scale
• 03:14 Why Landscape Architecture
• 04:04 Buildings & Places — The Portfolio
• 05:40 Airports & Post-COVID Demand
• 06:52 Defence & AUKUS
• 07:58 The Landscape Architect’s Edge
• 09:39 “My Profession Is Leadership”
• 10:16 The 10-Year Rule
• 11:07 Finding Your Strength
• 12:55 Teams as Puzzle Pieces
• 14:14 Communication, AI & Human Connection
• 15:58 Buildings vs Infrastructure
• 16:46 Running Different Business Lines
• 20:55 The National Role & the 7-Year Renovation
• 22:21 What Technology Fixes
• 23:43 Modular: Remote vs Urban
• 25:26 AI in Engineering — The Brightest Stage
• 27:19 The Infrastructure Deficit
• 29:44 Cost, Program & the Weakest Link
• 31:14 State-by-State Outlook
• 33:06 Brisbane 2032 — Olympic Fever
• 34:34 New Zealand
• 36:53 Advice for the AI Era
• 38:58 Reflections & Close

Key Takeaways

• Leadership is a profession, not a by-product
• The 10-year rule
• Find your strength by what you reach for first
• Build teams like puzzle pieces, not identical blocks
• A career needs a renovation every seven years
• Buildings lead, transport follows
• For engineers, this is the brightest stage in recent history
• AI means more engineers, not fewer
• The only lever on cost is time
• The weakest link sets the pace

Sound Bites / Quotes:
“What I call myself now is a professional leader. And that’s my profession — leadership.”
— James Rosenwax, ~09:39

“It takes you 10 years to really work out what your strengths are… and it’s only now I’m 30 years in that I know what I’m really good at.”
— James Rosenwax, ~11:07

“If you’ve got a pile of tasks every day, which is the one you do first? That’ll often tell you.”
— James Rosenwax, ~11:30

References & Resources

• Dino Vrynios / DAS Studios — Adelaide architect featured on EP07; referenced on “building homes like cars” / modular.
• Western Harbour Tunnel, Sydney — ~$9 billion transport project referenced on risk and scale.
• Hobart Stadium; Brisbane Arena and Gold Coast Arena (tenders) — venues work.
• Suburban Rail Loop and M80 (Victoria); Auckland Metro and Christchurch rebuild (NZ).
• BIM — Building Information Modelling (started in buildings).
• DFMA — Design for Manufacture and Assembly; Modular / MMC — Modern Methods of Construction.
• ECI — Early Contractor Involvement.
• Revit vs 2D AutoCAD — the tech-adoption gap between buildings and transport.
• AI in engineering — optioning, testing and design automation.