Gavan McDonell (27 November 1932, Brisbane, Queensland) is an Australian civil engineer, economist and political sociologist in the fields of national infrastructure policy reform, international development and academic education for advanced sustainability studies.
As a senior investment banker in the early 1990s, he wrote the first survey by a Westerner since World War II of the energy, transport and related environmental issues of the eight energy-rich republics of the former Soviet Union in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
During the early 2000s he made well known contributions to policy reform for the design and structure of the national electricity markets and grid, the country's most complex infrastructure system.
)[1] In 1997 McDonell received a Doctor of Engineering from the University of Queensland, the highest academic recognition, rarely awarded, given for original and distinguished contributions of a career.
[2] The citation observed that his work marked " ... the emergence of a new professional field which might be called 'the engineering, management and evaluation of large infrastructure systems ... linked with social and political theory and relating human concerns to the environment ... ', and that it had ' ... set policy agendas and legislative programs for longterm change at national and State levels in freight and urban transport, shipping and ports, electricity and energy, and toxic wastes'.
He took a Master of Arts in political economy and international studies from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, in 1961, with a thesis on infrastructure policy in post-revolutionary China.
)[10] As a result of road/rail conflicts and industrial disputes blocking highways serving all capital cities on the Australian mainland, this enquiry, established by the New South Wales government, resulted in the restructuring of much of the NSW rail freight industry, new road licensing, and the first comprehensive economic measures of national road freight infrastructure costs.
)[12] McDonell was also appointed by the Federal, New South Wales and Victorian governments to chair a public consultation and investigation of the regulation, storage and disposal of large volumes of hexachorobenzenes ('intractable wastes') throughout Australia.
[17] Some of these projects include: In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union McDonell was invited to join the newly established EBRD as senior adviser responsible for developing infrastructure, energy and environment investment strategies for the three Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the five Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
[26] In the late 1990s and early 2000s McDonell provided the economic direction for a series of studies, generally in conjunction with Intelligent Energy Systems (IES) (www.iesys.com.au), of policy and structural issues in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
His decision led to reconstruction of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Regulatory Test, the key guideline on major transmission network investments.