Gunther De Graeve is an international health strategist with a reputation for delivering quality solutions for the complex issues facing health service providers.
He is recognised as a thought-leader within the industry for his innovation in operational models and infrastructure solutions, his sustainable approach to planning and for his attention to detail; promoting and enabling flexibility and future trends.
Gunther is Managing Director of Destravis, the specialist consulting firm he founded to bring expert advice to clients in the health, higher education and research industries. Destravis brings a cross fertilisation of expert skills through a diverse in-house capability including service planning, health planning, master planning, cost management, business cases, economic assessments and operational optimisation.
Gunther delivers advice to health service providers – both public and private – designers, and financiers and policy makers including Health Ministers and senior members of government.
Gunther is a proactive member of the health facility community, participating and speaking at international conferences and study tours. He is the Chief Executive of the International Academy for Design and Health (Sweeden). He values the translation of research and frequently engages in research studies which realise system improvements.
He actively promotes new achievements in the industry.
Renae has a degree in Business Management and a decade of experience writing strategic reports for the planning and design of health facilities.
She has delivered countless project reports which convey complex and highly technical content in a structured, comprehensive and concise format.
Her strength lies in her strategic insight into business and strategic planning and the impact that has on structuring communication towards a targeted audience ranging from, ministerial reports, board approval to steering committee reports of project design reports.
She has a strong business acumen and ability to guide the implementation of business strategy.
Renae brings a personable approach to client relationships, maintaining that client satisfaction is the ultimate measure of success.
John brings a unique perspective to the space planning process, focusing on how people work and interact with each other as a basis for planning, specialising in the higher education and health sectors.
He is particularly interested in how to support multi-disciplinary teams who work across multiple locations, working on a wide variety of projects focused on teaching and learning, as well as research activities.
John draws on principles of Appreciative Inquiry and Complex Systems Thinking to develop strategies that enable the future strategic goals of an organisation, while ensuring their day to day operational requirements are not compromised. He brings a sociological approach to design problems, focusing on how to support communities of practice during time of change, be those changes in organisational structures, operation procedures or in the physical location; and frequently in all three simultaneously.
Andy is a self-motivated professional with over 20 years’ experience as a Quantity Surveyor in the construction and building industry. The combination of consulting experience and estimating for building contractors provides Andy a thorough understanding of complete project costing, market capability, trade breakdowns and elemental pricing.
Andy has strong technical and analytical skills which assist in the production of robust, accurate cost plans. He also has a detailed working knowledge of CostX and @Risk software which are implemented for detailed measures and further accuracy of project cost plans.
Phil joined the Destravis team in 2015 having spent over 20 years as a Brisbane based Director of a renowned global quantity surveying company (Davis Langdon). He brings unrivalled knowledge, experience and benchmarking ability to clients with complex capital works projects.
Phil’s expertise embraces the full spectrum of cost management services across the property and construction industries. This includes strategic cost advice for project masterplans and feasibilities, detailed cost planning, cost reviewing/auditing, technical advisory services and procurement strategy advice as well as value and risk management services on a diverse range of projects.
In particular, Phil has gained significant experience in the health care sector during his time in Brisbane where he has worked on many complex facilities for public, private and not-for-profit sector clients across the country. He has developed an exceptional understanding of the procedures and requirements for health projects and has accumulated extensive cost and area benchmark data on many types of facilities.
Many of the health projects Phil has worked on have included complex refurbishment components involving extensive staging requirements and he is thus very knowledgeable about the cost premiums associated with these types of projects.
Jeff has a diverse health portfolio encompassing projects throughout Australia and internationally. It offers an International perspective through his vast design experiences in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia, where he has brought strategic vision to a wide variety of healthcare planning and design projects.
Clients have benefited from his consistent involvement in the total design process, with a hands-on-approach to consultation, planning and design. Jeff embraces the challenges and complexities of each design, developing innovative, quality solutions that meet the client’s vision, always re-thinking to imagine space, environments and function.
Jeff works collaboratively with health clients to translate their specific requirements and desired clinical outcomes into buildings that support their health service plan, and within environments supportive of the healing process.
He has managed large-scale and complex buildings with multiple phases, involving the management of multi-disciplinary design teams often located across different continents.
Helen has had an extensive career within the health care field, with a background covering a broad range of managerial, clinical, executive and project roles in both the public and private health sectors in Australia, as well as the UK.
Working as the Lead Health Planner on a variety of projects from primary healthcare through to major quaternary hospital redevelopments, Helen’s clinical background combined with her practical hospital redevelopment experience provides her with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities brought about by major redevelopment projects.
Her experience enables her to work closely with all clients and their representatives and effectively channel the outcomes of planning work into the final design solution.
Dr Ashby is one of Australia’s most experienced clinician executives. For two decades he occupied a number of senior health executive roles including Executive Director of Medical Services at both the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Executive Director of the Princess Alexandra Hospital and Chief Executive of the Metro South Hospital and Health Service, the latter serving a population of 1.3 million with an operating budget of $2.3 billion.
In 2017, Dr Ashby was appointed by the Minister for Health to the position of Chief Executive of eHealth Queensland, responsible for an operating budget of over $400 million and a capital portfolio of over 100 IT projects with a combined value of over $1 billion. The largest of these projects - the $612 million ieMR Program - has now successfully rolled out to 16 hospitals covering 60% of Queensland Health clinical activity with over 50,000 users undertaking 18 million transactions per day.
Dr. Ashby joined Destravis in 2020 to provide specialist advice, underpinned by extensive benchmarks and lessons learnt from the development and implementation of digital technologies and systems in health facilities.
Georgie is a highly skilled planner and designer of hospital and health facilities. For over 15 years she has been working predominately on these complex, specialist projects.
Georgie has a passion for the process of design. Stakeholder engagement, research and analysis are inherent in her projects. She seeks opportunities to expand and innovate on existing benchmarks to reflect a brief while exceeding the clients expectations.
The breadth of Georgie’s capability in health facility planning and design reaches from briefing, master planning and design. This detailed understanding of hospital requirements and the process of health projects brings confidence to her role of Project Leader and engagement facilitator.
Previously a practising clinician, Sue has spent the past 10 years focussing on clinical planning for hospital redevelopments including client-side roles for the Sunshine Coast University Hospital PPP project in Queensland.
Sue is an experienced health infrastructure and services Commissioning Manager with demonstrated capabilities in the design, building and service commissioning of hospital and health care facilities.
Her knowledge of the health care industry, from government policy to direct patient care, comes from extensive clinical experience in critical care nursing and organ donor coordination.
She has developed an expertise in managing diverse stakeholders to collaboratively develop fit-for-purpose healthcare solutions that meet both clinical and patient needs.
With almost 2 decades experience in the health sector, Jeanette understands that an effective health service planning process is fundamental to any health reform so that current and proposed practices, models of care, assets and facilities are developed to ensure that staff are enabled to make a difference to their patients, families and consumers that they care about.
Jeanette is passionate about Healthcare Design. She uses her practical knowledge and experience gained from having worked in various hospitals for many years to inform the project design and instigate the process of change management for the new facility.
Michael Molloy is a lead designer with decades of relevant industry experience. Michael is a former Senior Lecturer in Design at QUT where he lectured for over 20 years. The combination of academic and practical applications of his expertise ensures he keeps abreast of current design trends, technologies and products.
His extensive experience is most valuable when applied to critical points of decision making such as project definition and briefing, early concept creation, or design reviews.
While his ideas are innovative and move boundaries, he keeps the clients vision as his central focus. His inspiration is a reflection on the clients objectives and budget.
Michael has professional and academic experience in North America, UK, South East Asia and Australia and has spread his ideas across many industry sectors. He is proficient in all aspects of the project, which makes him an excellent strategic player in origination, delivery and peer review.
Carol is a degree qualified architect with specialisation in health care environments. She spent 9 post graduate years as a Health Architect in Brazil, working for the leading healthcare architectural firm in Latin America.
Carol relocated to Brisbane in 2018 and joined Destravis to continue her career in the specialised industry.
In addition to her architectural studies, Carol has completed further education in Landscape Design to enhance her passion for creating healing spaces of wellness - both inside and out.
Sandra is a highly experienced facility planner and architect specialising in high technology buildings including healthcare facilities, research centres, laboratories and educational facilities.
With great communication ability and close client interaction, Sandra ensures that her project planning and design achieves high efficiency and high quality finish within client’s budget and performance expectations.
Sandra’s maturity and leadership are evident in her commitment to project establishment, management and development, ultimately achieving the best possible solution for clients.
She is able to rapidly define the client’s requirements and needs and translate it into facilities that reflect a clear logic, relevant connections and layout flexibility.
Jodi is an effective, results-driven leader with a diverse career portfolio spanning the disability, mental health, community and acute health service areas in Queensland and Victoria.
As an expert health service planner she has a proven ability to design, analyse data, plan, monitor, consult, evaluate and manage complex programs and projects that support best practice, clinical quality and patient safety. She prides herself on developing health service plans that are implementable and deliver strategic and operational outcomes.
Jodi brings valuable strengths to her clients through:
Alison is a Registered Nurse and accomplished Health Planner with over 20 years’ of experience in the health sector. Alison’s background covers a broad range of clinical and managerial roles in both the public and private health sector. Some of her significant achievements include:
Diyar has a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design (Iran) with two years post-graduate experience at Destravis.
He is developing a specialisation in health, underpinned by membership of the International Academy of Design & Health and a shared vision to develop salutogenic environments that promote wellness.
Diyar plays an active support role in many Destravis projects focussed on developing high quality plans and graphics which translate clinical requirements into built form. This includes functional relationship diagrams, room data sheets, floor plans, renders and graphic presentations.
His skills are utilised by all Destravis studios who benefit from his collaborative approach and evolving capabilities.
James is a Senior Architect with over three decades experience in his profession. He undertakes project roles including Project Architect or Project Team Leader roles of building projects specifically in the aged care, and health care sector.
James’ areas of expertise include:
Tony has been responsible for the briefing, planning and design of a number of major hospitals and health related projects. He has a unique perspective to healthcare architecture having completed a 3-year nursing course at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane after completing his Diploma in Architecture. This provided him with good insights, understanding and working relationships with hospital staff and users. Tony has a compassionate and caring nature and a dedication to this very special aspect of architecture.
Tony is experienced in leading stakeholder engagement to develop a well defined project brief and concepts for functional, well-designed health spaces. He has a very broad skill base across all aspects of architecture, and strong technical and inter-personal skills.
Jennifer Hands has 30 years experience as a critical care nurse and hospital administrator.
Jennifer’s focus as a health planner is to advise and support the planning phase of major hospital building projects. Her experience and qualifications afford a dual approach to planning; clinically, she advises on internal quality assurance regarding operational relevance and re-engineering of models of care. As a qualified interior designer, Jennifer also advises on functional brief development and the impact of spatial design decisions.
Jennifer advised and supported Queensland Health Infrastructure Division for a number of years in regards to the application of the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines, evidence based design and new models of hare in healthcare design. She has undertaken research and made recommendations to support both clinicians and design teams to contemporise health care designs on the QH $6Billion capital redevelopment program.
She has undertaken various audits in support of strategic master planning by applying benchmarking and occupancy evaluations and is a great contributor in the review of design compliance.
Glenn is a health care specialist. His career in health spans over 20 years and ranges from clinician, management, researcher, analyst and planner. For more than 10 years’ he has been specifically involved in service planning, activity mapping, planning and reporting.
Glenn has well-developed expertise in interpretation of health information, demographics data analysis and report writing. His skills lie in developing and maintaining data sets to capture services delivered, and includes marrying activity and acuity into a useful information to inform decision making.
He is adept at collating data from existing sources, and creating purpose built solutions to provide for evidence based decision making. The ultimate outcome is cost effective, efficient and safe healthcare.
Glenn was on the statewide working party for Nurse Patient Ratio project, and sits on a number of statewide groups and forums.
His various analyst positions utilise his extensive clinical nursing background and informatics knowledge to improve patient centred outcomes and develop evidence informed practice by presenting technology based solutions.
Anthony is experienced in providing consulting services to health services and state health departments in Australia.
He has assisted organisations through analysis of data for service planning, workforce planning, benchmarking, systems monitoring and modelling of process improvement initiatives.
He brings a high level of analytical skills coupled with a proven ability to synthesise data, interpret results and prepare communication to a variety of professional areas.
Anthony’s recent deliverables have included Detailed Business Cases, Option Studies and Feasibility Reports.
As an experienced project leader, Anthony has highly developed project management skills including the ability to scope and plan projects, manage task delivery, and to liaise and negotiate with clients, interested and periphery stakeholders to deliver high quality products that meet or exceed expectations.
Julia is an experienced Architect who specialises in health, and tertiary education projects.
Her past project experience is focussed in the planning, design and project coordination stages of projects in Australia and overseas.
Julia brings proficient project planning, architectural and interior skills to all projects. She takes a considered and practical approach to the resolution of highly technical issues.
The breadth of her experience has developed a comprehensive skill base and professional approach to clients.
Julia's key strengths include:
John is a highly experienced and respected leader in the design and delivery of complex health and research projects. He has been the project director for many of Australia’s Public Private Partnerships hospital projects and has achieved award winning and highly functional and sustainable design solutions.
John’s approach to design is collaborative and inclusive to gain a holistic understanding and consideration of the complex health and research requirements for the client. He has an in-depth understanding of health facilities and the master planning and architectural and health planning requirements including project co-ordination and team management.
John successfully led a large architectural practice in Melbourne, Victoria and is now part of the Destravis team to provide expert knowledge and design services to deliver high performing, health facility design outcomes.
Natalie has 18 years’ experience across the health, disability and community development sectors including in health service planning, project management, program evaluation, population health, primary care commissioning, research, international development, clinical governance, pathology, and biosafety.
She has led more than 10 complex service planning/development, program evaluation, and review projects for government and non-government organisations, including projects of national significance. Her most recent role was project manager of a range of primary care strategy development, evaluation and commissioning projects in Queensland. She has also led service planning and needs assessment projects focussing on the health service needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and remote populations in Queensland and the Northern Territory. This has included ethical and culturally sensitive consultations and engagement with remote health workforce and communities, including Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations.
Natalie prides herself on bringing clients on the journey and ensuring utilisation-focused project outcomes. She is a member of the Australian Institute of Digital Health, Public Health Association of Australia, Project Management Institute, and Australian Evaluation Society.
Kate is a progressive healthcare business operations leader, researcher and academic who excels in rapidly changing environments requiring smart decision-making. She has distinguished herself through performance leading and establishment of efficient operations in start-ups and high-growth research organisations.
Kate has extensive skill in biomedical and translational research institute environments for enhanced healthcare outcomes, including prevention, diagnosis and therapies and is recognized for astuteness in operations, finance and technology solutions with experience in three successful biomedical institutes.
Her current leadership portfolio includes:
Bill is an experienced Development Director and Manager with over 15 years experience in the construction and property sector.
He brings valued experience in the development of healthcare and precinct projects in New South Wales and Queensland. He is responsible for the day to day management of all development related issues including finance, construction, design development, coordination, authority approvals and legal.
Bill’s market knowledge and procurement experience is utilised for our clients through assistance with tendering and letting of capital projects.
Megan has 17 years experience in Quantity Surveying.
Megan has an understanding of the complexities involved with creating a project that must satisfy a tight budget, but still, deliver functionality with affordability.
Her extensive experience in various procurement methods provides our team with cost control methods regardless of the contract chosen including GMP, Two Stage MC, D&C and Traditional.
Megan’s key attributes include:
Want to join the Destravis team? We would love to hear form you!
For enquiries relating to careers at Destravis please contact us via email at HR@destravis.com
.