Your team

Gerard O'Hara, Managing Director and founder of 451 Consulting

Gerard O'Hara is a career management consultant. After completing his MBA he managed the General IT Consulting and Cost & Performance Management teams for Price Waterhouse Brisbane. He was later headhunted to join PA Consulting as Queensland Practice Manager for Strategy, Finance, and Technology Services. Gerard then joined SuncorpMetway to establish an internal Management Consulting department of 48 staff to assist through the merger of Suncorp, Metway, and QIDC. Gerard has conducted over 250 hours of lectures to MBA students at University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology, and has been a speaker at over 20 Conferences on topics ranging from Benchmarking, eCommerce, Change Management, Benefits Realisation, Cultural Change and Investment Management.

Mark Hocknell, Associate Director

Since joining 451 five years ago, Mark has engaged with a broad range of organisations in the public and private sector to improve their performance in the following three key areas, (1) Strategic and Business Planning, (2) Customer-Centric Business and (3) Performance Management and Measurement.  Within the strategic and business planning area, Mark has used and adapted a range of techniques to help organisations produce strategy and plans that are meaningful and actionable.  Likewise in the customer-centric business practice Mark has developed and applied a complete set of methodology to assist organisations become more customer-centric and benefit from this approach.  Within the performance management and measurement practice, Mark leads the PuMP® accredited team of consultants.  Prior to starting with 451, he gained almost 20 years experience in management roles, leading large scale Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives and change programs as well as the operational leadership of sales and services teams, including a 600-seat contact centre.  Mark has an MBA.  In 2003 he was contracted by the Brisbane Graduate School of Business (QUT) to develop two units within the award-winning MBA program (CRM and Sales Management) and is regularly contracted by them as a Sessional Academic.

Richard Ponsonby, Associate Director

Prior to joining 451 Consulting, Richard was an Executive Manager for IBM in the UK for six years where he helped clients set strategic business plans, change their businesses and resolve conflict. Richard is a Chartered Engineer (MIMechE, CEng) and a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA). He was also trained by, and has worked with, behavioural psychologists to build substantial organisational change management capability. Richard has consulted to major organisations across a range of sectors (e.g. UK Government, Retail, Banking, Industrial) and focused in facilitating senior executive groups. He specialises in guiding management and delivery teams, helping to structure complex unstructured problems, dealing with risk and developing action plans to execute solutions.  The majority of Richard's consulting assignments have focused on: helping management teams change their business activities to support new strategic directions through change management and measurement. He is also experienced in strategic workforce planning.

Wayne Marchant, Associate Director

Wayne is a highly experienced ICT CIO who has strong capability in transforming ICT functions to materially raise efficiency and effectiveness yielding improved cost management, customer service and better staff satisfaction.  Wayne has held executive ICT roles for Flight Centre, Woolworths, Lend Lease and Ampol.

Wayne has retained his hands-on management style and in 2005 became a management consultant with 451 Consulting, assisting organisations to transform their ICT function, based on the application of ITIL.

Nick Griffin, Associate Director

Nick's track record demonstrates his proven leadership and well-developed people management skills, which has enabled him to bring together diverse functional groups to focus on key business objectives and customer driven outcomes. He has been able to develop and motivate multi-disciplinary teams to achieve clear objectives and targets while building strong business relationships.  

Nick's background in delivering quality project outcomes and objectives on time and within budget has been achieved by utilising my significant project/program management experience and expertise gained in over 20 years of implementing business improvement projects, major change initiatives and key strategic initiatives across all facets of business. During his time Nick has directed and managed major complex projects, cultural change programs, and the implementation of many business improvement initiatives.

Bill Davis, Associate Director

Bill is a management consultant with a specialisation in group facilitation and leadership capability development. Bill has an extraordinary depth of experience spanning the defence force, large corporations and international SME's. Following a 13 year career in the Army, in a succession of line and corporate management roles, Bill pursued academic and commercial interests.

His primary focus since has been in the Human Resources field although in recent years he has been working in start up companies as CEO/COO. He has extensive involvement in organisation change and transformation and continues to work in this field with small and large organisations that are attempting to achieve greater market alignment. Part of this transformation experience is a growing network of senior managers and executives that he coaches.

Bryan Quant, Associate Director

Bryan is a business consultant with more than 20 years ICT executive management experience within a diverse range of larger and small-to-medium size organisations. Bryan's commitment to establishing effective, valued business partnerships has been a key foundation for achieving substantial reform and business transformation.

In the dual role of Strategy Leader and ICT Services Manager for a range of organisations, Bryan has been responsible for transformation of key business processes, information systems and services to deliver sustained cultural change for both business and technology environments.

He has extensive experience across a range of business models servicing a variety of industry types in both government and commercial sectors. Bryan has an established track record of building and sustaining high performance management teams and ICT service delivery organisations.

 Ian Townend, Associate Director

As a management consultant with over 20 years executive management experience nationally and internationally (including Europe and the Middle East), Ian has worked with government, large corporations, and small-to-medium enterprises across a multifarious range of industries and sectors.

Specialising in business planning, systems and process improvement, business continuity planning, organisational change management and large scale project management, Ian has an extensive range of skills that underpin his capability which allows him to succeed in highly complex and culturally diverse environments.

Ian is also an emergency response specialist who has international experience planning, managing and implementing disaster management and emergency response plans across a wide range of agencies, governments and geographically divergent scenarios.

Ken Garrard, Associate Director

Ken's experience of managing business, people, programs and projects is substantial. He brings the ability to translate strategic thinking into operational delivery, with over 30 years experience in delivering strategic business change initiatives, sometimes supported by technology.

Ken's skills lie in using his commercial acumen, strategic view and customer focus to assist business managers to articulate their vision, needs, ideas and priorities, to facilitate the development of agreed viable operational plans that support the business strategies through portfolio, organisational change and risk management and then lead the business through transition.

Kerry Fortescue, Principal Consultant

Kerry is an energetic and results-focused organisational change professional with well-rounded business experience and qualifications in corporate, operational and change management arenas. From a solid chartered accounting platform with Deloitte, Kerry has broadened and strenghtened her professional capabilities encompassing project management, business improvement and organisational change management.

Her recent experience is rich with diverse and challenging change management acheivements with organisations including Brisbane City Council, Commerce Queensland, Darling Downs Foods Limited and Golden Casket Lottery Corporation Limited. Kerry has completed a Masters of Business Administation (General Management) and holds professional memberships with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Chartered Secretaries Australia.

Ian Peter, Principal Consultant

Ian works in the areas of strategy, policy, business analysis and project management, with a proud history of successfully managing change in government, large and medium sized organisations, and of innovative approaches to business transformation across a wide range of areas including information technology management, human resource management, and communications management.

Internet technology related projects are a specialty. Ian Peter has pursued a number of Internet technology based initiatives and managed projects across information management, content management and knowledge management for a range of clients. He has also provided specialist services in Internet and Intranet site establishment, and advised successive federal governments in Australia and international organisations on Internet and telecommunications issues.

Debra Mitterer, Principal Consultant

Debra has a strong State Government and Financial Services industry background with 20+ years professional business experience in a number of strategic roles and diverse industries.  Debra's significant Program and Project Management experience , coupled with her extensive line management experience, provides a strong foundation for re-positioning an PMO, analysing business performance, IT solutions, and developing business strategies for the e-Business world.

Shane Knight, Principal Consultant

Shane is a senior business analyst and project manager with 25 years experience in Civil Engineering, Information Technology and Transport Operations gained working in private industry, public service and a Government Owned Corporation (GOC).

His speciality is in business analysis, stakeholder engagement, change management and project management; introducing new work practices and technologies, including Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD), spatial / GIS, Internet / Intranet, mobile technologies, Assets Management (AM), Document Management (DM) and Information Management (IM).

Shane has managed business areas in attaining ISO Quality Accreditation and undertaking International Customer Service Standard (ICSS) accreditation while introducing Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Along with accreditation as a Registered Project Manager (RPM) with AIPM Shane also has a strong interest and experience in coaching and mentoring in personal development and business awareness.

Aaron Schneider, Principal Consultant

Aaron built a strong career foundation with Ernst & Young before moving to the broader consulting industry in 2002.  Aaron has since expanded from the Finance industry into the Human Resources and Information Technology arenas, assisting large Corporate and Government clients to transform their business operations through the enhancement of human capital performance.

Commencing with 451 Consulting in 2008, Aaron utilises his broad commercial acumen and experience to drive organisational improvement and capability development initiatives.

Erin Taylor, Principal Consultant

Erin is a management consultant with more than 15 years management experience across a variety of business environments including the telecommunications, banking, insurance and investment industries. Erin is a project and customer management professional who has created solutions across a range of business challenges. 

Specialising in business process improvement, Erin is a successful practitioner in Customer Satisfaction Research, Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, Business Process Reengineering, Project Management and Six Sigma (Black Belt).

Erin's experience is supported by formal qualifications in business administration and organisational communication.

Kelly Hurtz, Principal Consultant

Kelly is passionate about achieving sustainable business improvement by guiding organisations to define their strategic vision and enabling business units to work together to achieve this goal.  Kelly specialises in strategy development, organisational change management, communication, stakeholder management and community engagement. 

Kelly has a strong background in State Government and has recently worked with small-to-medium businesses delivering business improvement and change strategies.  Kelly has a MBA and further tertiary qualifications in public management, business communication and media studies.