CEO MONTHLY / Chairperson Awards 2022 19 that adds a new depth to the city’s offerings. And you can drive between them all within eight minutes. “That’s just the beginning,” Mr Sinnathamby says with a smile. The population of about 53,000 people is growing annually and planned to reach 145,000. Mr Sinnathamby’s path towards visionary city-builder has been anything but conventional. He was born in war-torn Malaysia and moved to Australia to study as a young man. Earning his Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of New South Wales enabled him to take his first professional steps, but Mr Sinnathamby was always looking for more. He wanted to pursue his vision of developing areas that would create better lives for their residents. Mr Sinnathamby’s insists that “All power is within you” – a creed of self-belief. His other principles include acknowledgments of the lessons learned from failure – “the darkest night brings the brightest dawn” and “character is established through a thousand stumbles”. Mr Sinnathamby would live those principles as he moved to Perth in the 1970s and set up a business before eventually bringing his young family to Queensland to pursue new opportunities. Mr Sharpless and his family followed, and the pair eventually settled on the land that would become Greater Springfield. They saw something that others did not because the land sat untouched on the market for many months. “It was the chance of a lifetime,” Mr Sinnathamby recalls. “When a person walks past a rock, they see a rock. But a sculptor walks past it and says ‘there’s something in this rock’.” Plenty of people saw the rock. Very few saw the city that would be carved out of it. The land was basic at best – almost 3000 hectares of a disused forestry operation. The area that would become the heart of Greater Springfield didn’t have a road nearby for kilometres. How do you make that into a modern city? At least one bank had cold feet as the experiment unfolded, demanding its money was repaid quickly, but the doubters were thinking down the wrong line. They expected the Sinnathamby-Sharpless partnership would attract a financial backer and roll out the semi-rural land projects that were popping up on the fringe of the capital city. Nothing new in that, they said, but they didn’t understand the vision that was driving Greater Springfield. They didn’t understand the resilience, perseverance and sheer hard work of Mr Sinnathamby and the team put together to make the city into reality. This was a long-term project that would become the key to uniting the areas of Brisbane, Ipswich and Logan into a complementary urban network. Greater Springfield would have a CBD, an education precinct, a health precinct, an innovation precinct, excellent transport and many families who would live long, productive lives without the headaches of traditional cities built without planning coordination. This wouldn’t be a masterplanned community. It would amaster-planned city. And it would be fuelled by the commitment of a man whose biography would be called Stop Not Til The Goal Is Reached. “Our work is not done,” Mr Sinnathamby said. “We have 65 per cent left to do but the fundamentals are in place and as a city, we look forward to the future with open arms.” Mr Sinnathamby will continue to follow the principles that have underpinned the success of his business life: “Make one idea your life”; “Work relentlessly”; and “Create your own destiny”. Those three principles tell the story of Maha Sinnathamby and Greater Springfield, and how it has achieved such success. Company: Springfield City Group Web Address: www.greaterspringfield.com.au
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