Beca engineer promoted to key international role

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Senior principal civil engineer and Beca’s Southern Regional manager Letitia Drury has been appointed as Beca’s group director, mobility and precincts.

The role spans New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Asia and is focused on land transport and development, airports, ports and marine, geotechnical, and infrastructure resilience and climate adaptation. Mobility and precincts is one of Beca’s four global business units.

Drury has been with Beca in Ōtautahi Christchurch for 16 years, having graduated with a natural resources engineering degree from the University of Canterbury. She is also an executive director of Beca Group Ltd and a past director of Beca’s Australian business.

Founded in Auckland in 1920, Beca is an employee-owned business with a team of more than 4000 professionals in 24 offices across eight countries, with projects delivered in 70 countries.

Beca chief executive Amelia Linzey said Drury would bring a broad range of project, technical, and management experience to the role. “Letitia’s authenticity, perspective, and interpersonal skills collectively enable her to make another step in the substantial contributions she has already made in helping drive Beca’s ongoing success.”

Drury said: “The privilege and … challenge of my new role is the focus on infrastructure resilience in every client project.

Drury will retain Christchurch as her home base. During her time at Beca in Christchurch, she has led through different technical, project director, and governance roles developments such as the Christchurch major cycleways programme, the Lyttelton Port cruise facilities, and as chair of the Kā Huanui a Tāhuna Alliance, several Tāhuna Queenstown infrastructure projects.

Major Christchurch projects undertaken during Drury’s professional and leadership roles at Beca … many instances where rebuild efforts have led to urban outcomes that exceeded the conditions of pre-earthquake environments.

Drury sits as a member of Beca’s shareholder council and the group’s diversity and inclusion steering board.

“I’m stepping into a vast region with multi-disciplinary planning, design, and engineering requirements,” she said. “The experiences, challenges, and accomplishments of Christchurch have proven to me the impact organisations like Beca can have when there is a vision, a willingness to work in partnership, and a desire to deliver long-term outcomes to complex issues.” 

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