From its origins SMEC has been characterised by a multicultural workforce. The Snowy Mountains Scheme employed staff from a wider range of countries, some of which had been political and military adversaries only a few years before. Nevertheless, the Scheme was completed in an atmosphere of effective co-operation across technical and ethnic cultures and with a focus on the future rather than the past. Many of the staff employed on the Scheme were subsequently transferred to SMEC when it was established in 1970. In some ways SMEC was a precursor of the multicultural composition of contemporary global companies. In a way SMEC's past and present have become the world's future.

Today SMEC continues this tradition. At any point in time staff with origins in more than a dozen countries will be represented among SMEC's Australian workforce. In addition, the staff of the SMEC Group network of offices overseas includes representatives of more than 30 countries. This continuity in the development of the company ensures that SMEC staff have a cosmopolitan outlook and a curiosity about social environments and cultural values around they world. They understand how to work with people from many different linguistic, ethnic or religious backgrounds, whether they are colleagues or clients.

SMEC seeks consciously to build on this tradition by encouraging the different parts of the SMEC network to draw on the entire pool of human resources contained within the Group to locate the staff members with the most appropriate set of skills and experience. It is becoming increasingly commonplace to see staff from SMEC India or SMEC Bangladesh working elsewhere in Asia or staff from SMEC Malaysia working in the Middle East or Australia. If we were to single out one aspect of SMEC's operations in which we are at the forefront of global developments, it would be effective project or program delivery across cultural boundaries.