Our mobility in resourcing; responding to a rapid programme

There’s no doubt that the Australian construction industry is booming – and nowhere more so than in NSW.

Over the past year, Hansen Yuncken has strategically identified, tendered and won $590m of exciting and unique contracts across NSW. Concurrently, the business enacted an agile and ambitious strategy to ensure that we have the right quality and quantity of resources available to deliver these projects, and any awarded to us in the future. As a result, the NSW business has increased its workforce by 30% in the past 6 months, and now exceeds 200 employees.

On a rapid build project in rural NSW, the project team was required to commence construction within 2 weeks of contract award. We quickly deployed a small team from Sydney, and ramped up to 40 local people within 8 weeks in an effort to meet the ambitious programme. Understanding most employees are required to give 4 weeks’ notice, we embraced a mix of methodologies to increase the team without compromising safety or productivity, including recruiting past employees or seeking referrals from past employees. The project now has a total workforce of over 210 on-site, which will rapidly climb to over 300, with approximately 40 Hansen Yuncken employees managing the project.

Supporting the local communities in which we operate is important to Hansen Yuncken. As well as always endeavouring to directly employ local people on projects, we also look to local businesses and companies to form part of our pool of sub-contractors, or to support other appointed sub-contractors.

While rapid recruitment and deployment is an important part of our resource strategy, so too is the retention of key knowledge, skills and experienced leadership, from project to project. All our teams are structured to ensure new resources are ‘buddied’ with more experienced personnel, to ensure Hansen Yuncken and client standards are maintained, and lessons learnt are transferred across the organisation which assists our resources skill and experience development.

So how do we ensure Hansen Yuncken remains an employer of choice? We ensure career progression, attractive salaries and high quality training and programs, including our NSW Undergraduate Development Program where 4 undergraduates out of over 400 applications are appointed each year and are provided with on-site and head office experience in three key business areas. We ensure that individuals are respected, appreciated, kept safe and offered opportunities for advancement.