New Year's Day in Sydney is like no other city on earth. The harbour lights up. The bridge becomes the centrepiece of a global broadcast. And when the crowds finally go home in the early hours, they leave behind something nobody talks about in the highlight reels — abandoned cars. Dozens of them. Parked wherever the night ended, as their owners made other arrangements home.
By the time January 2 arrived, those cars were still there. And so were we — five semi-trailers loaded with blasting and painting equipment, trying to thread through the chaos of a city still sleeping off the night before. Our destination was the Sydney Harbour Bridge itself. Our window was a full shutdown. And there was absolutely no margin for error.
Our job was a blasting and painting scope on a section of the top steel rail — hazardous coatings removal with full PPE and decontamination units on site for every worker. A laundry contractor. Washers and dryers on wheels. All of this in winter conditions, high winds, driving rain. Nature had no interest in our programme. We had every interest in getting it right regardless.
At the time, Eptec was running multiple major infrastructure projects simultaneously across the Sydney region. Directing this operation was Michael Ippolitti, Eptec's Group Construction and Infrastructure Manager — a man with a rare and extraordinary gift. Where others saw problems, Michael saw solutions. Ten of them before breakfast, delivered without fuss, without drama, and without anyone in the room quite knowing how he did it. He was the kind of leader who makes complexity look routine.
My role was necessarily a bird's-eye view — keeping across everything, maintaining the HSE lens, making sure the evidence of good work was being captured properly. What that required was absolute trust in the people underneath me. And on this job, that trust was fully justified.
Indra Indrapalan, the infrastructure group manager, had made a smart call before the job began. He put Praveen Angammana in charge — an engineer who ran his team with the kind of precision that makes a safety manager's job straightforward. You don't have to chase compliance when the person leading the work already owns it. Praveen's team moved like clockwork. Every step planned, every hazard identified, every person briefed and ready.
