Ben Evans

Group Managing Director | Chief Executive Officer

Ben is Group Managing Director of COVA Group, the built-environment consultancy delivering MEPF engineering, project management and quantity surveying across Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe, with group responsibility for strategy, operations and the firm’s technology direction.

He joined COVA as an engineer and moved through design management and project management, delivering Australia’s first Green Star certified school and a staged operating theatre and critical care redevelopment inside a live hospital at Royal Hobart.

Ben took over the Sydney office in 2008 and rebuilt it through the Global Financial Crisis into the firm’s strongest performing business, establishing the retail capability COVA holds nationally today. He wrote the strategy that redirected the firm, was appointed to lead it, and rebranded the business as COVA in 2017 as it moved into Asia, now the group’s largest region by turnover.

He has led the firm through three bets: from Hobart to national Australia, into Asia from 2018, and now into AI-first delivery. The third is about encoding engineering judgement so the whole firm can use it, not replacing engineers: the thinking behind COVA’s direction to 2030, software first, humans always.

Ben remains a project director for major clients on significant projects, and is an alumnus of Harvard Business School.