About Us

We are a collaboration of highly skilled professionals in the planning space who have hundreds of years of collective experience across the vast scope of ‘planning’ in NSW. Our experience comes from NSW, interstate and overseas and through roles in State, Local, and National governments as well as planning consultancies.

We all started our professional lives separately, but we have worked with each other, in different capacities, over the decades and have mutual respect and a shared professional integrity that enables us to provide exceptional planning advice and to work collaboratively to find a solution.

Sue Francis and David Ryan met when Sue was a consultant for Wellings Smith and Byrnes in the late 1980s. Sue and David established CityPlan Strategy and Development Pty Ltd in 2008. This is where the Gyde story begins.

In 2015, having built City Plan Strategy & Development up from 5 to 20 people, Stephen Kerr joined the party. He and David had previously worked together at Baulkham Hills in the 1990s. Juliet Grant joined in 2016 after a long stint in the planning and transport departments of the NSW State Government, and the business continued to grow.

The merging of Helen Deegan’s team in The Planning Group (TPG) with City Plan Strategy & Development in 2018 was seamless, based on a shared approach to planning.

New Directors were added to the fold in 2018. Mel Krzus, who has been with us from a graduate in 2009, became a Director in the business. Her planning skills, knowledge, and excellent client relationship skills reflect our ‘grow your own’ commitment to developing our leadership team from within. Chris O’Dell joined from the Department of Planning and added his exceptional analytics skills to the group.

We appointed Greg Incoll as Independent Board Chair in 2019to assist us with our corporate governance. With this growth and expansion of planning and business acumen, in 2020we decided we needed a new vehicle in which to move forward. Thus, Introducing Gyde Consulting Pty Ltd

We have a fantastic group of people at Gyde. It would be remiss to finish ‘who we are’ without mentioning the wonderful emerging professionals and mid-career planners we have on our team. We couldn’t do it without them.