Damo's story

Joining Monadelphous as an undergraduate engineer, Damien Johnson has been with us for 16 years and recently took on his newest challenge as General Manager Electrical and Instrumentation and International Projects.

We caught up with Damien to learn more about his journey with Monadelphous and how he balances his busy life, a young family, and the demands of his job.

My journey with the company started as an Undergraduate Engineer on site at Port Hedland in 2005 and I was fortunate enough to be offered a graduate position during my vacation work following completion of university commencing in 2007.

I spent the initial first five years of my career working on site at various places, including Port Hedland, Newman, and Brockman as a Project Engineer then Senior Engineer. Majority of this time was spent on the Rapid Growth Projects in Port Hedland where I had the opportunity to live and be part of the community. I became heavily involved in the community and have many memories of playing football for the local team and enjoying the outdoor adventures the Pilbara has to offer.

In 2012, I was given my opportunity to run a project as the onsite Project Manager at Marandoo and quickly packed up my life at Port Hedland to commence my new journey. This project involved supply and installation of structural, mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation (SMPE&I) works and had a peak workforce of approximately 300 to 400 personnel. Whilst very challenging, this project was very rewarding as we had an excellent team and delivered the project to an extremely satisfied client.

Following this project, I delivered several other projects including Cape Preston, MAC WTP, Nyrstar and was later promoted into the Operations Manager role within the Mining Minerals West team working on several large scale SMPE&I projects. Having held that role for a few years I then had an opportunity to join Mondium back in a project role to undertake my first EPC Project, Western Turner Syncline 2.

Mondium provided myself with a new challenge and gave me exposure to engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project which included design, earthworks, concrete, structural, mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation, commissioning and ramp up of production. The Western Turner Syncline 2 project was a great learning curve, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Mondium. I was later promoted to the Monadelphous position of General Manager for EPC Projects and held a position within the Mondium team as Manager of Construction.  

Coming into the E&I and International Projects GM role, I’m keen to take all that I have learned and apply it to this new challenge. For the majority of my career, I have been focused heavily on the operations (projects) side of things so it will be great to be involved with running a business unit, being part of the growth and being able to develop our people. It’s a new challenge for me but having been around Monadelphous for the last 16 years, there are a lot of familiar faces and people who have made transitioning into the new role a bit easier.

Away from work, I enjoy time with my family and being part of their weekend sports. I have three kids, a daughter aged 9 and two boys aged 7 and 3. All three are extremely active and I spend most my weekends taking them to various kids’ sports and activities. My daughter has found her passion in gymnastics, my eldest son wants to play any sport involving a ball, and my youngest son is just flat out busy. Switching off and being present in those moments, helping out with their teams and cheering them on from the sidelines is the most enjoyable part of my week.

Outside of family and work, I have a few interests now that I am well and truly retired from footy, which consumed all my earlier years. These interests predominately revolve around cycling and triathlons amongst a few other hobbies.

Recently, I completed a charity ride (The Bunker Bay 300 Classic) in November with the Mondium team, riding 300 kilometres from Perth to Bunker Bay in a single day and we managed to complete that in just under 10 hours. There was a lot of soreness after the ride, but it was an awesome thing to be part of and I’m thrilled that we were able to raise money (approximately $100,000!) and awareness for three grass root mental health charities, 20talk, Blue Tree Project and Kai Fella Foundation.

I look forward to being part of the journey of these two business units and getting to each of the respective sites and operations to meet as many of you as possible.