When it comes to Ben Clark, the legal profession’s loss has proved to be asset management’s gain. South Australian Clark began his undergraduate life with a “few years of law, but it wasn’t sitting that well with me.”
From there he turned to the area of GIS and surveying, and from there moved into asset management.
“I just found a taste for it, the infrastructure and asset management and project management path,” he said.
“And then I fell into local government, and I realised that having an impact on communities – both large and small – was really important for me and something that I got a lot of energy from.”
From 2013, Clark has worked in asset management roles at a number of South Australian councils, and has been in his current role as the Director of Works and Engineering at the Barossa Council for more than three years.
He has also been a longtime and active member of IPWEA and was appointed to the board in 2021, and elected Vice President in 2023. He recently took up the Presidency of the organisation in November 2025.
“Early in my career I was really fortunate to have some mentors who introduced me to IPWEA,” said Clark.
“As a young professional at the time I got involved in young IPWEA and I really saw the benefits the organisation provided to members.
“I enjoyed the links and the networking with peers, and the ability to be able to pick up the phone and call someone and say ‘I’m not sure about this, do you have some experience you can share.’”
Just as his local community is Clark’s passion, he is also passionate about the mission of asset management and developing the profession.
“Becoming President was about me putting my hand up and saying ‘I really want to help support the organisation and be part of driving it forward,’” he said.
Clark has observed a maturing of asset management as a discipline, and its evolution into an attractive career path for graduates from professions such as surveying, engineering and even accountancy.
He is also excited by the calibre of the young people he sees coming into IPWEA and the profession, both with their skills and motivation.
“Asset managers need to be story tellers, they need to tell those stories to explain budgeting or to articulate projects to communities,” said Clark.
“The young people I see coming through have a far greater ability to do that.
“They also have a really strong technology focus but also a strong moral compass, and I think that is going to drive a lot of change through the industry.”
In his role at the Barossa Council, Clark is always mindful that “At the end of the day, the community is paying for their infrastructure. This raises the questions around how we build projects and deliver infrastructure that doesn’t have generational inequity,” he said.
“The challenge is to build something now that my grandkids aren’t still going to be paying for and won’t be able to use.”
Clark was the project director on the $45 million development of the Barossa Oval, which hosted matches for the AFL Gather Round in 2025 and will again in 2026.
Gather Round is one weekend when all AFL fixtures are played in the same city, and as part of its hosting Adelaide has also staged matches outside in regional areas.
In the role of project director, Clark worked with diverse stakeholders from the AFL, the South Australian State Government and local community organisations.
He was determined that, in delivering this project, it had to be a facility which would continue to be valuable for the community outside of hosting a handful of AFL matches.
“The challenge was how do we design a facility that has that quintessential Barossa feel but has all the modern technologies and is climate ready and can scale up for AFL or cricket or whatever it might be,” said Clark.
“The facility had real local impact, because the stakeholders were the local footy, cricket, tennis, athletics, bowl and even pigeon racing.
“It was an oval that had 11 and 13 year old kids running around playing their footy, and also AFL players, so it was just this perfect storm of community impact, economic impact at a local, state and national level.”
While it was a major showcase for the Barossa and for South Australia, at its core the Barossa Oval had to be a community facility.
“At the end of the day the Gather Round might be here a year or two or ten, we don’t know,” said Clark.
“So it had to cater for our growing region for the next 50 to 100 years, because we don’t have the ability to go back ten years and say ‘let’s rebuild it.’
“That’s where the stakeholder management and engagement came in and we were lucky enough to take the time to model the project from and asset management perspective.”
The team needed to understand the different levels of service required over the next 50 years, while being fiscally responsible.
“We saw the results from the Gather Round, where there were millions of dollars in economic impact to our region,” said Clark.
“And our local clubs reaped the benefits of a brand new facility that was supported by the State Government. From the outset it was imperative that we were meeting those community needs as best we could and continued to maintain that as a key priority throughout the project.”
