Sarah Elkhatib

Sarah Elkhatib
Senior associate, geotechnical engineer
Arup

SARAH Elkhatib joined international consulting firm Arup six years ago, and was its only offshore geotechnical engineer in Australia at age 30.

At the time, Arup faced stiff competition from a dominant player that had the lion’s share of work in Western Australia in the offshore space.

However an approach from Apache Energy to work on one of its oil projects helped to jump start Ms Elkhatib’s portfolio of work, with subsequent reports of her professionalism and Apache’s continued revenue success winning new clients.

Ms Elkhatib has since grown the offshore geotechnical engineer division to 18 staff, with the team today recognised as Arup’s ‘hub’ for offshore geotechnics, and the expertise in Perth highly sought after both internally and externally.

Ms Elkhatib plans to double the size of the team in the next few years, sticking to her motto that a business’s greatest asset is its people.