It is now many years since SMEC operation as an offshoot of the Snowy Mountains Authority and the company's portfolio has expanded considerably from its original core business of water resources, hydropower generation and road construction. Nevertheless, lines of continuity remain within SMEC which continue to reflect in our professional approach the experience of that massive reconstruction project which so captured the imagination of generations of Australians and embodied a new Australia emerging from the Second World War. Very few staff now remain in SMEC who began their careers on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. However, managers who learned their skills during that project trained most of our senior executives and today's managers pass on these traditions in the training and guidance they provide to more junior staff.

The legacy of the Snowy Mountains Scheme is evident in a number of different aspects of SMEC's operations and values, including:

· Commitment to national development

SMEC is primarily a development company and we choose to apply our skills through projects in the built, social or natural environment which contribute to national and regional development

· Personal resourcefulness

Work on the Snowy Mountains Scheme was harsh, involving surveying and mapping of almost unexplored territory and extended periods in remote locations with a bitter winter climate; SMEC still values the personal capacity of our staff to devote themselves to the achievement of their tasks regardless of the conditions; we pride ourselves that there is no site in the world so remote that SMEC staff will not work there

· Technology transfer

The Snowy Mountains Scheme was built on technology transfer from the outside world; the Snowy Mountains Authority had a technical co-operation agreement with the US Bureau of Reclamation for the initial 10 years of the scheme and learned much about project management and large scale construction from the early European contractors (especially Norwegian firms); this tradition is continued in SMEC's belief in the importance of technology transfer across national frontiers and its understanding of the practicalities of this process

· Training

Nothing on the scale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme had been undertaken in Australia before and many of the skills required for its design and implementation were created from nothing; training of staff, often people newly arrived in Australia, was essential to meet project timetables; SMEC retains this commitment to practical training as the basis of development

· Multicultural workforce

People from many different countries worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, many of them migrants from a Europe ravaged by the Second World War; both migrants and native Australians had to learn to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries and to work together effectively to achieve the project objectives; today SMEC is even more multicultural than the Snowy Mountains Scheme and our corporate strategy emphasises the importance of staff from many different ethnic or linguistic backgrounds located in many different countries working co-operatively to meet the needs of clients and to build the company.

In its future evolution as a company SMEC wishes to retain these sorts of qualities which h we consider to be of enduring value to any organisation seeking to provide practical support to agents of national and international development.

For more information on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, please visit http://www.snowyhydro.com.au