Meet Idy Li, Group Manager at EIC Activities, who manages a team of more than 25 geotechnical engineers for some of Australia and New Zealand’s largest construction and infrastructure projects.
Idy grew up in New Zealand, attending University of Auckland Civil Engineering School with the intent to become a Structural Engineer, but it was her holiday work at a geotechnical firm that changed the course of her career. She loved the ambiguity of soil and rock over clean-cut structural engineering, and decided to become a specialist Geotechnical Engineer, creating solutions that make projects safer, more efficient, and sustainable.
In her role at EIC Activities, Idy works closely with CIMIC Group companies including CPB Contractors to influence outcomes that shape cities and communities for generations. She says EIC Activities’ geotechnical engineering services have evolved into full-scale delivery, particularly in ground engineering, with the team engaged at all stages of CPB Contractors' projects - from tender, delivery and post-construction.
“EIC Activities was born from a need to have technical and digital experts in critical engineering functions assist across CIMIC Group projects. These services are not only vital to being able to win complex projects but to deliver them in the most technically and commercially optimal way.”
The team relies on cutting-edge digital technology to deliver their work, with IDD Tech’s data management platform, GeoSens, utilised to gather 100’s and 1000’s of instrumentation and monitoring records on a project site. The platform consolidates that data into graphs and tables that can be easily digested in real-time by engineers and site operators, allowing continuous, accurate monitoring of critical infrastructure performance throughout construction, ensuring instruments behave as expected and any issues can be identified early.
On one of CPB Contractors’ rail projects in Melbourne, the scope of work centred on upgrading and modernising critical rail assets to enhance overall network performance and capacity. A key challenge emerged in coordinating large volumes of monitoring data across multiple sites, particularly rail track and deep excavation movement data, which needed to be accessible to a wide range of contractors, designers, and stakeholders.
To address this, GeoSens unified disparate monitoring systems into a single source of truth, providing a centralised digital platform to integrate, visualise, and manage geotechnical and structural data in near real time. This significantly improved data accessibility and transparency, reduced manual effort, and enabled proactive risk management through alerts and dashboards.
Idy Li explains, “GeoSens enabled streamlined data management, automated reporting, and clear visualisation of monitoring trends, allowing teams to make faster, informed decisions and maintain compliance with strict project requirements. The platform transformed how we managed monitoring data, turning complex datasets into actionable insights that supported safer and more efficient delivery.”
While the demand for geotechnical expertise is high and complex construction is never short of challenges, Idy says “the more obstacles we observe, the more opportunities we see to improve. It’s an exciting time.”