From military leader to Defence consultant: A conversation with Synergy Group Melbourne Partner Mark Bainbridge

At Synergy Group, we're known for delivering impactful solutions to government. Our 25-year legacy is underpinned by bringing in consultants with deep domain expertise. Mark Bainbridge, a Partner in our Melbourne office, is the perfect example of our people having a strong grasp on the sector in which they are working. Before stepping into consultancy, Mark spent his career in the Australian Army, climbing the ranks to become a distinguished military leader in the special forces.

Now, eight years into his shift to consultancy, he's brought a wealth of domain knowledge and leadership expertise to the Synergy Group Melbourne office, which opened last year. On top of his impressive military career, he's equipped with valuable consulting experience, having worked in Defence and National Security. This has included support to the establishment of the Sovereign Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Group, Victorian State Government Department of Health, Catholic Education, fast-moving consumer goods and advanced manufacturing companies. He is highly skilled in designing and leading complex transformation programs and organisational performance.

Here, we speak to Mark about momentum at Synergy Group Melbourne, and his significant work in Defence.

Hi Mark! How is everything going at Synergy Group Melbourne?

It's been a great year so far; we're in our 10th month of operating our of a Melbourne office, and we've had new hires start recently, which has been great. Our Governance, Performance & Assurance practice has been particularly busy, as well as our Program Design & Delivery practice. We recently completed two days of SAFe agile training for 12 of us, so we're upskilling in the midst of growth. We're working in a couple of different parts of the Victorian Government; with a team in the Victoria Department of Transport & Planning, and also a team starting in the Victoria Department of Health, and we have other activities across different clients as well as Defence and the Federal Department of Health and Aged Care.

You had a distinguished career as a military leader in the Australian Army before you moved into consulting eight years ago. Tell us - why did you decide to join Synergy Group Melbourne?

We're growing something really special here in the Melbourne office, and we've got a great start-up vibe with the support of a bigger firm to back us, which has been really helpful. It feels different here at Synergy Group; it's really people-centric and client-centric, and culturally it's where I want to spend my time for the rest of my working life. The calibre of our growing team is fabulous and was a huge motivation for me to join the Synergy team.

Can you talk us through a typical day in your role? Is there a morning routine that gets you set up for a good , productive day of work?

I'm normally up at 6:30am and do a bunch of stretches and mobilisation in the morning and a little bit of exercise. I help get the kids ready for school, then I'm on the train at 8:00am, I'm at the office by 8:30am and we normally have daily stand-ups from 9:00am for teams that I'm working with, to set priorities for the day. Day-to-day, we run an agile way of working and no two days are the same, which I find exciting and fulfilling.

I'm currently working on a full-time basis for the Australian Submarine Agency, which is delivering the nuclear power submarine program. This sees me travelling to Canberra and also working in their Melbourne Office in the city. With our recent establishment in Melbourne, we're focused on steadily growing our Melbourne presence including building brand awareness and brand profile in the Melbourne market, meeting clients and running a growing team.

Can you tell us about the team you have at Synergy Group Melbourne?

Our Melbourne office team has grown over the last few months, which is great. There is a growing team of about 18 people now in Synergy Consulting, as well as six in our ThinkPlaceX business. We also have Synergy ICT Managed Services in Melbourne, with a team that predominantly works offsite in a Defence base out west.

Our office is in a very cool warehouse right in the middle of town, and it's a great place to come to. Because we're small, we all know each other quite well, and we're setting the right conditions for a fantastic culture here in Melbourne. It's collaborative and we don't get too worried about who does what - there's no "Are you a project manager or are you an auditor or are you a strategist in ThinkPlaceX?", that's not a concern. We're all supporting each other and the cross-talk is fantastic.

When we spoke to Simon last year, he discussed the Department of Defence's significant capability in Melbourne and Victoria. What areas of Defence have you been focusing on in the Synergy Group Melbourne office?

Victoria's the home of land-based capability, which has a number of big and significant programs underway at the moment. We're also looking forward to an announcement soon by the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Group, with some of their industry participants hopefully starting up here in Victoria. I'm keen and focused on how the federal, state and industry interfaces come together to generate capability to support Defence and National Security. The nuclear-powered submarine programs are between here, Canberra and Adelaide, so we travel a fair bit. The Avalon Air Show and Land Forces are big features of our Defence landscape, too.

Outside of Defence, what other projects are you working on?

We've got active engagements within the Department of Transport & Planning and the Department of Health, as well as the Victorian Auditor-General's office for our Governance, Performance & Assurance team. Other areas that we're actively focused on include the education sector - think universities, TAFE, schools, and Catholic education, which is where I've spent a lot of my consulting career. The energy sector is really important to us here, particularly in transition initiatives occuring for the mixed models of different energy providers and how that works from a customer side. One of the main offerings we're developing here in the Victoria market is our infrastructure advisory offering. We've got quite a few team members with great qualifications and experience in infrastructure-intensive sectors and industry, and we're aiming to be able to provide a full lifecycle offering, including upfront design planning, business case, capability delivery and operations. The mid-term focus is to bring those services to market to support a lot of work in the big build initiatives that are occuring around Victoria.

What global or national issues motivate you in your role?

There's such an interesting change in geopolitics with our primary alliance with the US at the moment. As a nation, we've been on the right path about developing sovereign capability for a while, but perhaps the more transactional nature of our alliance with President Trump in place, really underscores the need for our sovereign capabilities. This requires investment in industry and looking into how we can support it in scaling up to deliver the capabilities required in the current National Defence Strategy.

And then closer to home, I go back to what matters most to our community; on the back of all the Covid work, the health department's top of mind, and that will always be something we're interested in. But we've seen a real growth in the energy transition sector at the moment, and that to me is a national issue with real local impacts, and the very fragmented privatised energy market at the moment is ripe for some transformation, and we're hoping to support.

How can clients get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is great. You can message me here.