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Perth, Western Australia

Fidel González.

Engineer. Founder. Steward of the businesses that build the world.

I buy and build engineering consultancies — the quiet, essential firms that keep mines running, structures standing, and people safe. My work sits at the intersection of technical practice, long-term ownership, and the conviction that good businesses deserve good successors.

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"The engineering firms that built this country's mines, bridges, and plants are approaching a generational crossroads. Their founders are retiring. Their knowledge is irreplaceable. I believe the answer isn't private equity — it's stewardship."

The Story

From coal handling plants to the boardroom

Fourteen years ago I walked away from the safety of institutional employment and started Mincka Engineering from a desk in Perth with no clients, no contracts, and a conviction that the work could be done better. Three years of proving that — walking mine sites with inspection equipment, burning feet, coal dust — before the first real contracts came.

Today Mincka serves BHP, Glencore, Anglo American, Sojitz, and Tronox across Australia. We've built something rare: a cross-border engineering delivery engine — Perth-registered engineers paired with a technical team in Colombia — that delivers Tier 1 quality at fundamentally different margins. Along the way we developed Argus, an AI-powered digital twin platform for structural health monitoring, validated through three ACARP-funded research projects with universities.

But the thing that keeps me awake isn't technology. It's succession. Across Australia and New Zealand, hundreds of engineering consultancies are run by brilliant founders with no plan for what comes after them. These aren't businesses to be stripped and flipped. They're the quiet backbone of the built environment, and they deserve to be stewarded into their next chapter.

Convictions

What I believe — and build around

I

Tradition is not nostalgia

Engineering firms carry decades of accumulated judgment — relationships with inspectors, knowledge of specific assets, hard-won regulatory credibility. That institutional memory has value. I don't "transform" it. I protect it and build on it.

II

The owner-operator matters

The best engineering consultancies are run by people who do the work themselves. I'm a registered engineer across five jurisdictions who still reviews drawings and signs off reports. That changes how I acquire, how I lead, and how I earn trust.

III

Build for the century, not the quarter

My investment horizon is a decade. My ambition is multi-generational. Every acquisition, every system, every hire is measured against one question: will this still serve the mission twenty years from now?

Newsletter

The Engineer's Thesis

Fortnightly writing on engineering, acquisition, stewardship, and building businesses that outlast their founders. No corporate speak. No growth hacks. Just the work.