Early Career
After working as a construction engineer in Tasmania with Hydro Tasmania, McDonell was a design engineer with Ove Arup in London, and managed their Accra, Ghana office, supervising bridge and building projects, including architecture by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.
In the period 1961-1963, he was engineer and economic adviser with the government of Northern Nigeria, based in Kano, and was responsible for the economic and demographic aspects of the first Greater Kano Masterplan, probably the first regional development plan in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the early/mid 1960s, McDonell advised on finance and planning to the Board of McDonald Industries Limited, Chairman Sir Warren McDonald, and was project manager for the first Frances Creek, Northern Territory iron mine and related Darwin port facilities program.
In 1966 he was appointed founding Director-designate and later Director of the Department of Transport in Papua New Guinea, the first in the Commonwealth to embrace land, sea and air transport. He directed the preparation of Papua New Guinea's first national transport plan which formed the basis for long term financing and development. (See Transport in Papua New Guinea: Governance for more information.)
McDonell conributed the transport and economic analyses for the first City of Sydney Strategic Plan which has provided the long term basis for the City's planning process. (See City of Sydney: Politics for more information.)
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