Rod Johnston is a concerned Australian, committed to making our country a safe and responsible contributor to international peace and prosperity during these increasingly turbulent times. Rod and his wife, Robyn, have four adult daughters and thirteen grandchildren. For four years he was an elected member of Hornsby Council and for fifteen years was a member of a major political party. When does fiction become prophecy, and when does prophecy turn to reality? These are the questions that inspire Rod Johnston in his current literary career.
Rod Johnston is a civil engineer and builder, with over 50 years of experience in design, construction, research, and development in Australia and overseas. With master’s degrees in both Engineering Science and International/Community Development, he recently completed a semester as a university lecturer in Humanitarian Engineering.
Rod Johnston has visited 85 countries (many of them multiple times) spread over six continents, and much of it has been involved with humanitarian aid programs. He regularly visits the countries of the South Pacific including Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, and previously Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Cook Islands and Kiribati, to plan and audit humanitarian infrastructure construction projects.
Since 2005, Rod Johnston has been the president of Partner Housing Australasia, a voluntary NGO, which “aims to transform the lives of people living in Asia-Pacific villages by improving the cyclone, earthquake and tsunami resistance of their houses, clinics, schools, and community buildings; and by providing clean water supplies and hygienic sanitation”. Under his leadership, the organisation has funded, designed, and constructed many village schools, community health building and houses in PNG, village water supplies in Solomon Islands, basic shelters and latrines in Philippines, latrines in Solomon Islands, housing cyclone anchorages in Cook Islands, and funding for transition housing in Fiji. In 2005, Rod Johnston carried out a comprehensive management and technical building audit of housing reconstruction in Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka for a major NGO following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
For fifteen years, Rod Johnston represented Consult Australia (the peak body representing Australian consulting engineers) on the Building Codes Committee, which produces the Australian National Construction Code. He has been an active member of sixteen Standards Australia technical committees (in addition to many working groups) over a 38-year period, producing 31 Australian Standards and Handbooks. He has been chairman of four Standards Australia technical committees.
Rod Johnston is the managing director of civil and humanitarian engineering consulting firm, Quasar Management Services Pty Limited, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Partner Housing Australasia. He was the principal of Electronic Blueprint, a web-based specification and training service for architects, engineers and builders, and Building Products Certification, a firm involved in assessing and certifying the suitability of building products.
