A principal-led network of senior specialists.

The core team

Damien HardingPhD, BE(Hons), CEng, MIChemE

Principal & Owner

Founder of Harding Innovation Consulting, with over 30 years across rail, mining and processing. Former General Manager Innovation at Rio Tinto, Global Director Innovation at Hatch and later Senior Principal in Hatch's advisory team. He led the lowest-cost net-zero strategy for Aurizon, Australia's largest rail freight operator, and advised a global automotive OEM on critical-minerals due diligence and supply risk. Co-author of more than 30 patent applications.

Roger BuckleyMA(Cantab), CEng, FIMechE, FIEAust, EngExec, CPEng, GAICD

Rail Domain & Business Development

A Chartered and Registered Professional Engineer in UK, Europe and Australia, with over 35 years of engineering leadership across heavy-haul rail, defence and infrastructure. Former Chief Engineer and Fleet Decarbonisation Manager at Aurizon, where he shaped the rolling stock decarbonisation program and led world-first zero-emission prototypes. He now leads Taglio Pty Ltd, partnering with HIC on systems engineering and decarbonisation.

Grant WellwoodPhD, BE(Hons), CEng, MIChemE

Mineral Processing & Commercial Readiness

A process engineer with a career across mineral processing and technology innovation, often on the major-miner side of the table as an innovation gatekeeper. Former General Manager of the Innovation Network at Rio Tinto and Technology Project Portfolio Manager at BHP, with senior roles at CSIRO and Jenike & Johanson. As Principal of Wellwood Associates he advises mining-technology ventures on commercial and operational readiness, bridging data science and first-principles engineering to de-risk the journey from pilot plant to commercial operation.

Jonathan BurtonMBA, BSc(Hons)

Analytics & Modelling

An advisory analyst specialising in techno-economic modelling for decarbonisation, rail and mining. He builds HIC's technology-evaluation and techno-economic modelling suite in Python, under HIC's strategic direction. More than three decades across strategy consulting and quantitative analysis, including senior analyst at Hatch and technology leadership roles at Deutsche Bank and LIFFE.

Consulting-led: you keep the model, we protect the method

We engage as consultants and deliver strategy underpinned by custom models. By default the model we build for your decision is yours: auditable, and transferable to your team at the end of the engagement. Where a managed or proprietary platform suits you better, we can build that instead. Either way, the underlying methodology, cost curves and calibration that power it stay ours: licensed, never transferred, and shared only by commercial agreement.