We know there’s one thing that really sets us apart: our people. In this new series, we take you behind the scenes with people from all over DB Results and show you what really makes us tick.
I’m Robbie Purcell – I’m a Senior Consultant at DB Results, and also the Social Club president for the last 14 years. I dabble a little bit in business analysis and testing, although that seems to be the second and third parts of my career at DB Results! I got to run a Testing 101 for the new Associate Consultants this year, and having the opportunity to do that with such a young group, giving them an oversight of what testing’s all, that really brought it home to me how much I enjoy that side of things. I actually got lots of questions afterwards on the different areas of testing, and how do they get involved, and what is it all about – to be able to answer all of those questions and actually provide support to the younger group is something I really got a buzz out of.
Before I joined DB Results, I spent 13 or 14 years in utilities. When I first started work, I was a meter reader, going around reading electricity meters! Then I had a couple of knee issues, so I spent a lot of time in the office looking after the group of meter readers that we had, the operational side of metering, all of that. And then I spent the last two years of my role working on a project, which is where I met the DB Results crew. I found my way leaving the utilities and going to work for DB Results to bring in that experience and utilities industry knowledge, and probably spent next eight years working on utilities projects as more of a business SME.
I’m also a Line Manager, so as you’d expect, people are the number one focus for me. I am a very people-focused person, not just within the organisation, but on the customer side, and outside of work as well. I think that’s why I enjoy consulting so much – getting that opportunity to meet so many different people.
My biggest career highlight – and it’s more on the social front – would be the trip the Social Club took to Samoa for our ten-year anniversary. The opportunity to go to a place like Samoa was fantastic, but while we were there we did an activity with a primary school, where we took about 3 or 4 big large bags of sporting equipment over there and got the opportunity to hand it out to the entire school, about 50 kids. It was just one day out of our trip for ten days to just spend it with the kids, go play with them, kick the footy around. Seeing their eyes light up was just an amazing opportunity, amazing feeling – brought a few tears to the eyes – just a magic day. We just had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something like that. That’s definitely a career highlight. That was our whole DB Results way. It brought everything to the fore – our whole HELP purpose – all in one day. It was just a magic opportunity, magic day – I can’t say enough about it. So to be able to organise all of that, that was something special.
Away from work, it’s exactly the same stuff, it’s bringing people together at home. We’ve got a great neighbourhood where we live at the moment, and I love being able to bring that neighbourhood together, whether it’s a dinner, drinks, anything like that. COVID hasn’t been great for all that, but through lockdowns we’ve been doing what we called “iso dinners”. Not that we could get together at all, but we’d send WhatsApp messages around to everyone and go, okay, what are we going to do Saturday night for dinner? There were six families of neighbours involved, and we’d all cook up a massive dinner and drop a piece of everyone’s dinner at everyone’s doorstep, and we’d take photos and send them around to everyone and show what we were doing. That was our way of keeping a bit of sanity.
People management, to me, it’s getting the best out of people, and just being there for anyone who needs it. I’ve worked on some projects that are long days, long nights, some really tough moments for everyone, and just being someone that anyone could come and talk to – you know, I could have 20 coffees a day just to keep everyone going – you do what you’ve got to do so. I love being able to do that for people, and that’s what DB Results is great at: we look after our people, but we look after other people that are in need of support as well.
Want to find out more about the fantastic people behind DB Results?
Make sure to check out the rest of the series: Renee Cook and Michelle Marchewka
