Sophia Campbell
Fulton Hogan
Sophia Campbell is the Central Otago Environmental Advisor for Fulton Hogan, where she works closely with site teams to monitor activities, provide practical guidance and education to strengthen environmental and sustainability performance across a range of activities. Her role centres on supporting staff and projects to deliver essential infrastructure efficiently for the community, while balancing strong environmental outcomes through effective planning and implementation.
Before joining Fulton Hogan, Sophia was an Environmental Compliance Officer at Bay of Plenty Regional Council, where she specialised in proactive compliance monitoring of permitted activities and risk-based assessment of sites with the potential for significant non-compliance, including unauthorised activities. She brings that regulatory experience to her current role, supporting practical environmental management that enables infrastructure delivery and supports regional growth.
Crossing the divide – People, principles and partnerships
Complying with environmental law is an ever-evolving challenge – and for Fulton Hogan, doing that consistently across New Zealand and Australia is business as usual. With more than 6,500 people plus subcontractors working on our sites every day, across multiple councils, regions and regulators, there is no consistent 'one-size-fits-all' approach to environmental compliance. Our environmental commitments are our minimum practice requirements – a baseline we apply regardless of where we are working or how local compliance expectations might be interpreted.
People remain the biggest variable in how that plays out day to day. Our mantra – people at the heart of everything – applies to safety, delivery and how we engage with communities, and it equally underpins how we work with regulators. Our clients expect our people to instinctively understand regional rule sets, and it can be tempting to assume contractors share an identical understanding ("mental model") of compliance requirements. When those assumptions don't line up, challenges, cost and risk can emerge. Effective engagement and communication are critical to achieving good outcomes for the environment, regulators, clients and communities.
To be industry leaders, we invest in our people so they can do the best job for our clients and communities. This includes targeted environmental training, simple digital field tools and clear support structures that connect site leaders with teams of specialist environmental practitioners. This backbone of support means frontline teams are better equipped to interpret local requirements, solve clients' problems, apply our internal standards consistently and have confident, constructive conversations with regulators.
From a Fulton Hogan point of view, this presentation explores what good engagement between regulators and the regulated looks like on live infrastructure projects. Using real examples, we will unpack:
How early, plain-language conversations help align our internal standards with consent conditions, local rules and CME expectations.
Where inconsistent messages from different regulators, or from within a regulator, make compliance harder, not easier.
Practical behaviours on both sides that build trust without sliding into regulatory capture.
How digital tools and transparent reporting can turn "inspection days" into better environmental outcomes and enhanced engagement opportunities.
Attendees will leave with clear examples of effective engagement from a contractor's perspective, and practical insights they can apply when working with large civil contractors in their own regions.