39 minute read
Social licence | panel discussion
L-R: Jodie Brough, Ashley Jarquin, Natalie Malligan, Henry Byrne
Social licence
Key points:
• social licence is not just a communications challenge, it is about how a business is accepted by its stakeholders • social licence is an integral part of business strategy and service delivery, and • the relationship between government and industry is critical in getting and maintaining a social licence to operate
Panellists:
► Henry Byrne, Group Executive, Corporate
Affairs, Transurban ► Ashley Jarquin, General Manager, Corporate
Affairs and Marketing, John Holland ► Natalie Malligan, Head of Cities, Australia and
New Zealand, Uber
Moderator:
► Jodie Brough, Partner and Office Head (Sydney), Newgate Communications Jodie Brough (JB): As a communications professional, I spend so much of my time talking about social licence. This is often with clients who are nervous about what it means for them and feeling that it’s going to change them in ways that are expensive and not constructive. That is why this is a timely conversation to be having.
Social licence is a very fluid and subjective concept. It depends on where you are, whether you’re a proponent, a regulator, or a consumer. How do you define social licence and what’s driving the focus on it? Is it a communications or a business challenge?
Henry Byrne (HB): It is not a communications challenge. Anyone who approaches the challenges around social licence as
a communications challenge is missing the point. Social licence is about how business responds to changing expectations, so it must be business-oriented. It must span all different parts of a business if you’re going to design an effective response.
The definition of social licence is essentially the extent to which a business is accepted by its stakeholders. It sits on a spectrum between rejected at one end and accepted at the other. It is even defended in some circumstances.
The more challenging thing is determining how you move a business up the spectrum, not down it. That’s where it gets interesting as a challenge and a conversation. It starts to mobilise around this concept of trust, and that’s certainly where Transurban has gone. You put some specific parameters around defining the trust with the stakeholders you’re focusing on. It is then about how to define and move the trust dial.
Transurban has been active in framing some of the thinking out there. We have looked at some research from the CSIRO, which mapped out the building blocks of trust and then extrapolated those across to what moved the dial on trust.
That gives you a framework through which you can filter issues. The challenge for business is turning an amorphous conversation into something with specifically identified issues to address.
JB: Natalie, is this how Uber approaches the task?
Natalie Malligan (NM): It is a little bit different for Uber, being a consumer-facing business. I think we think of it in terms of two aspects – product and operating. You ask questions like, is the product acceptable to the broader community? Is it safe? Is it something that people will accept and use? In terms of operating, you ask, do we have social licence in how we operate as a company? For Uber, it’s probably the operating questions that have presented the most challenges over the years.
Most Australians love Uber as a product, but they don’t necessarily love our brand. That’s why we’re focused on rebuilding trust. How do we listen more? How do we collaborate better so people love our product and the Uber brand? If you don’t have that then people won’t use your product either.
On the point of whether it’s a business issue or a communications issue, it can be both. Even with the best communications people in the world, if your business is not operating in a way that’s acceptable, then it’s not going to work. But at the same time, we work tirelessly to ensure that we are communicating what we are doing well and that we are meeting expectations. If you’re not telling people what you’re doing well, then they may not give you the benefit of the doubt.
JB: Ashley?
Ashley Jarquin (AJ): From a contractor’s perspective, we certainly need to consider social licence at a broader corporate level and what it means for our business. For John Holland, social licence is very much won and lost at project level. We need to be able to deal with it very well at that project level in terms of understanding it, maintaining it, and acknowledging that when things go wrong it’s very costly for the business and our broader reputation.
I think it’s been an interesting concept for construction companies recently. In the current infrastructure boom, about 95 per cent of our projects are funded by government. This has meant that social licence has gone from being something that’s off to the side but important, to something that’s fundamental to our business. If we’ve lost trust from the community, it follows that we’ve lost trust from our client, being the Government.
JB: Political trust?
AJ: Yep.
JB: People do seem to get very nervous when you start talking about social licence in a corporate setting. My sense is that clients often view it as a threat. Do you think it is? Should industry be worried about social licence, or should they see it as having an upside?
AJ: If you’re still feeling nervous or sceptical about social licence, it’s time to move on – that ship has sailed. In the world of infrastructure, it’s no longer enough to just deliver a good physical product. There are higher expectations around how we deal with the community and our customers. It is critical to the success or failure of what we do.
There definitely are upsides. When engaging with the community well, you get much better project outcomes – better station designs, better routes and better environmental outcomes. In the contracting world, for organisations that understand it and get it right, it is often the true differentiator in terms of winning work.
Jodie Brough
Ashley Jarquin
JB: It sounds like it’s an internal communications issue, as well. Not everyone at a company has their finger on the pulse of the communications and political aspects. Henry, how do you see that?
HB: The key is getting to a practical conversation promptly around what resonates in a business dynamic.
What we’ve found is that if you stay out in this ephemeral kind of social licence space, talking in general terms about concepts like trust, you don’t very quickly get it into ‘these are the issues – this is why we think they’re going to move the trust dial – then these are the practical responses that we are looking to come up with’. If you stay too high-level, you’re destined to meander along and not achieve the outcomes you need to.
That touches on the point Natalie made around the distinction between businesses like Transurban and Uber. They’re obviously dramatically different businesses. However, I think the filter that we should be running our issues through is similar – the things that will move the dial.
If I go on to what we’ve seen, it’s the sorts of things like distributional fairness – are the benefits of the business fairly distributed amongst stakeholders? Procedural fairness – are they transparent? Dealings with the business and the nature of relationships – do people feel well-treated by the business?
Any business needs to look through that prism. Whatever issues a business has identified – whether it is through a stakeholder perceptions audit or customer data – you push it through that same filter. And while every business will have different issues to Transurban, the filter through which it is pushed should be similar.
JB: We were discussing before the difference between businesses that have elastic demand and those with inelastic demand. From Uber’s point of view – where you’re in a highly competitive environment trying to win customers from taxis and a lot of other people – do you have a specific view of what your priorities are when it comes to social licence and how to get it?
NM: Yes, that’s where we draw the distinction between a consumer and a non-consumer. It’s more straightforward for us because the stakeholders are more streamlined. We don’t think of it so much as social licence, but customer obsession. We have a broad customer base – about four million Australians use Uber on a regular basis. That’s a huge percentage of the population, so if the community is unhappy, our customer is unhappy. We also have about 60,000 active driver partners out there. If they’re not happy, that’s also a huge chunk of the population.
So, we don’t really talk explicitly about social licence –we talk about customer obsession. We are in a competitive environment. There are many forms of transport, so we must look at everything through a lens of potential impacts on our riders and drivers, and the impact it will have on those two bodies. Every time somebody walks out of their house and wants to make a trip, it is so easy for them to hail a taxi or to open a different app.
Uber is operating in an industry where the switching costs for consumers are really low. If you look at banks, you might
Henry Byrne
read something in the paper where you think, ‘Oh, I don’t really agree with what they’re doing there’. But to change banks, you have to go to the bank, change your mortgage provider or change your bank account, find all your documents – it is quite onerous. In our industry, you literally just walk out and put your hand out on the street.
That means we must be hyper vigilant about what our riders think of us. The same goes with our driver partners. They may be running multiple apps in the cars, so we need to win their acceptance. When one of our trips comes through, they can easily hit ‘accept’ on another app.
If we stay obsessed with our two customers – our riders and our driver partners – then we will the meet expectations of the broader community.
JB: You must find that you’ve got a bead on what your consumers are thinking in very direct terms because you’ve got the app. People are saying what they think all the time. Is that the main way that you gauge it?
NM: No, we listen, too. We hold roundtables with our driver partners and focus groups with our riders – we have many feedback channels. For instance, we have a team of people who work on driver engagement: measuring their satisfaction, gathering their feedback and coming up with priorities about how we change it. It is very much driven by data and personal feedback from our customers.
JB: Are any of your businesses formally incorporating the concept of social licence into your model?
HB: Yes, we certainly are. It is in our key performance indicators and part of an active discussion from the board level down. Social licence is a term that’s used explicitly in those discussions. Social licence is not treated as a discrete challenge. We have moved past the part in a meeting where you say, ‘We all now come to our social licence agenda item and talk about what we’re doing to address social licence’. Social licence is now two or three years old as a very active board level and down discussion inside the business.
It is a concept that people recognise needs to be considered in the context of what the business is doing. When looking at multi-billion-dollar development opportunities, social licence is embedded in several ways across that discussion. For example, when the customer team is looking at certain kinds of initiatives, social licence is considered explicitly or implicitly in several different ways. Social licence has become an integrated concept in the business.
JB: What about John Holland?
AJ: When it comes to projects, absolutely. Social licence is built into our bids and ongoing project monitoring to look
Natalie Malligan
at how well we’re dealing with the community and what the sentiment is.
We’re now building it into our broader corporate key performance indicators, especially in light of our new brand and business strategy. The real question for us now is: ‘This is who we want to be as a business, so how do we actually make sure we’re held accountable to that at a corporate or leadership level?’
I think that’s interesting and signals the evolution that some contractors are going through. We’re no longer just hard engineers or old-school traditional builders anymore. We need to move with the times and accept that our success is going to be dependent on our ability to manage our customers, the community and our reputation.
JB: To what degree did social licence drive the decision to rebrand? By the way, I like the little human being in the logo.
AJ: The brand, represented through the logo, was centred on a broader redefinition of our new purpose and values. I don’t think we ever sat down and said, ‘Because of social licence and because of where society’s moving, we need to consider it,’ but the output is definitely reflective of the times.
What was interesting for us was that there were several drivers for the rebrand. One of them was our changing clientele and changing expectations from them and the community. We needed to start thinking more about the role of our people and the community in what we do.
The rebrand was critical for us because we needed to make sure our response to changing expectations was more than just lip-service or a marketing exercise. It forced us to reflect on how we felt about that as a company and how much that was going to drive us going forward.
Our employees were also a big driver for us. In terms of the infrastructure boom, resources are now difficult to come by. We all want to attract or retain the best people. We’re finding that our employees are looking for a company with higher purpose. They’re looking at what the company stands for and our role in the world. That’s becoming even more important now with the new generation coming through. John Holland’s workforce is now 50 per cent millennial, which is just incredible.
So, reflecting the importance of social licence wasn’t necessarily an explicit decision, but those factors drove the direction we went in.
JB: Sometimes your customers are also your staff, so there can be a degree of crossover. Do you think there’s a risk that community unease and anger (if it’s unchecked) is going to drive reactive regulatory changes or overreach? Do you think that’s already happening?
HB: Yes, I would argue that we’re already there. Take our business as an example: we’ve been through three inquiries in the past 18 months – one in New South Wales, another more recently in Queensland, and a Federal Senate inquiry. We most recently went through an incredibly complex, comprehensive review by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as part of our involvement in the WestConnex transaction. That’s just an 18-month timeframe. I don’t know that the business had ever been through an experience like it in its history. So, I think it’s naive to think that we’re not already in that kind of environment.
The interesting thing is that it’s presented opportunities. It’s not just a risk discussion now. Obviously, you need to carefully manage those processes and engage with them properly. But it has also provided an opportunity to have a
far more detailed conversation around issues that are being raised around the business in a way that you can’t do in other forums. We put comprehensive submissions into them and it’s turned out to be quite beneficial for the business. This is because the issues are out there, they’re not going away, and people have views on them.
JB: Natalie?
NM: We’ve just gone through the whole regulatory process in each of the states across Australia. We worked very closely with all governments at all levels across Australia to get to where we are.
As we look forward, I think there are some chunky issues coming up, such as the future of work. Uber recognises that this is not something industry or governments can solve alone. I’m confident that we’ll be able to work collaboratively to come up with solutions that will stand the test of time with new innovations and industries – working together to think about the changing nature of how people work in Australia.
JB: Ash?
AJ: I guess I’ll reflect on it in terms of what we’re seeing in the form of the way tenders are put forward and the expectations on us. In the infrastructure space, there is a lot of good cooperation between government and the private sector. And in some ways, we’re seeing many of the Government’s priorities impact on the business world positively in terms of trends like flexibility, diversity, and a focus on engagement and training.
JB: So they’re saving you from yourself?
AJ: A little bit. It’s fair to say that Government has driven some of it for us, but there are now some issues where industry needs to drive Government. One of the issues we’re dealing with now is work-life balance.
If you look at current projects, people across all construction companies are working incredibly long hours. It will be a very brave thing for one company to stand up and say, ‘Well, we’re going to make our bid more expensive, so we can factor in more time for our people’. In fact, Government probably needs to stand up and say, ‘Okay, we get it, we’ll make it an acrossthe-board mandate for you all’.
There is room for a lot more cooperation and improvement on both sides.
JB: Okay. I think we’re going to take a couple of questions from the floor now. Who’s keen? Up the back there.
Geoff Daley, MUFG: In the instances where community engagement has been good or not so good, how do you find interaction with Government? How are you finding that linked to your social licence?
AJ: Because of my background, I understand both the Government perspective and that of the deliverer.
It’s quite interesting. Government maintains accountability in these projects in relation to the bigger picture of social licence. But once a contract is signed, we become the stewards of that social licence. We’re seeing some examples where it has been done really well by Government, and that makes it much easier for us to come in and engage with the community at delivery stage. It can be a much smoother process.
One key observation is that governments have a role at the beginning of a project to get their positioning right – a marketing and public relations exercise to sell the benefits of the project. Because of this, sometimes the nuances or the complexity in the delivery of that project aren’t addressed upfront. This means that the deliverer is faced with managing the community at that point in time when they say, for example, ‘I didn’t realise all those trees were going,’ or, ‘I didn’t realise it was going to be this close to my house’. Unfortunately, at this stage of the project, the time for that type of engagement is over because the Environmental Impact Statement is finalised.
The more we get the engagement and long-term view of the project right earlier, the better. That means not just seeing it as, ‘Okay, we need to sell it here and we’ll deal with that negative issue down the track’. We need to be brave enough to see the long-term picture and to acknowledge what is required for sustainable support of that project throughout its lifecycle.
JB: Do you think your view of what social licence is and what matters has changed since you moved out of government and into the private sector?
AJ: Probably not, but I do have a different perspective as a deliverer. We’re closer to the impacts than when commissioning projects in government. That hasn’t changed the importance or the impact it can have on derailing a project. It has given me a broader perspective on how it can be best managed and how much it requires bravery from all sides to have those nuanced, complex conversations about a project’s impacts.
West Gate Tunnel. Source – AECOM “The challenges and complexity around how you might implement a policy shift over the long term are very significant
JB: Do either of you want to add anything there just on Geoff’s question?
HB: I think industry is getting better. What we do around broad-based stakeholder and community engagement on major projects now is better than what we were doing five years ago. For example, on the West Gate Tunnel, we did comprehensive engagement through the design process, and now in the delivery phase. We’re getting better at using technology and thinking about stakeholder needs. We’re also getting better at feeding back input from those stakeholders into relevant parts of the project from the early stages of design and right through the project lifecycle.
It is not a static prospect how we’re doing, but social licence is imperative in improving our practices there.
JB: Other questions?
Adrian Dwyer: To what extent does the regulatory environment in which you operate constrain your ability to gain and maintain social licence? To what extent is it just a firm structure that just doesn’t allow you to make decisions that help you gain social licence? I’m thinking of things like the four per cent increase on tolls or rider-levy on trips in New South Wales.
HB: That’s clearly an issue. If you think about pricing in the current environment for our business and others, it’s being brought up in the context of the low-inflation environment we’re currently in. It’s a relevant consideration and it’s not one that we look at exclusively on our own. Obviously within our business, the pricing arrangements affected at the time the agreements are signed with government. It’s a critical consideration in terms of how the funding mix comes together.
If a toll road is being funded privately, government only has four levers to play with – concession length, price escalators, price starting point and their own contribution. They then move those levers depending on what the appropriate funding mix is for a project. That’s never a static prospect, that’s always going to change depending on the project. How we manage community expectations around that remains an ongoing challenge and is heightened in the current environment.
JB: While we’re on the subject of motorways, obviously a lot of people feel a resistance to toll roads and there’s also the debate around road user charging. How do you address social licence when people have a strong perspective already?
HB: In terms of road user charging, it is something that needs to happen over time, given the broader context around fuel excise that is going to impact government budgets more over time.
I think most economists would agree there’s going to have to be some kind of policy shift. However, the challenges and complexity around how you might implement a policy shift over the long term are very significant.
We did a very detailed study on this in 2016 with about 1,600 people in Melbourne. In the study, we trialled several pricing mechanisms on the network over a year and had the participants drive millions of kilometres.
There were several observations that can be made from that study about how road user charging could work. You can create a sustainable funding platform. You can look to demand management and other tools around pricing mechanisms. But there was also an attitudinal shift. The participants came into the study and were opposed to road user charging, like the broader attitudes presently in the community. By the end of the study, however, the majority of the participants favoured a road user charging system after they had experienced it.
JB: There certainly seems to be a premium on getting the formula right due to concerns about equity and so on. Is that an issue that comes up for Uber? How do you deal with the notion of people who’ve got a rusted-on perception around the brand?
NM: It’s slowly changing over time. On the question of whether there is a particular piece of regulation directed towards an aspect of social licence that has an unintended consequence on the business, there is one example that comes to mind. Each state and territory in Australia has a different regulatory regime around what it takes to become an Uber driver – they vary markedly across different jurisdictions.
For example, in New South Wales, if you take all of the steps – such as getting your driving history background and
insurance checked, and getting your vehicle inspected – it costs about $100. In other states, that can be closer to $1000. These steps are well intentioned by the Government to try to meet its perception of social licence concerns around safety – for example, adding additional medical checks and other steps – but it has impacted a driver-partner’s ability to earn.
The impact on business is that in states where the cost to get on the road is very high, you tend to see more driverpartners who want to drive a lot.
By trying to protect one side of the social licence, the other side of being able to create fl exible earning opportunity for people can erode.
JB: Ashley, anything you want to add there?
AJ: Of course, it’s an issue at a project level. Government decides the scope of a project and how it should be done, and then we take that on in delivering it. Largely, that is just the reality of what we do. We work within those confi nes to ensure we put forward the best outcome during the tendering phase.
JB: Is the balance right between private sector delivery in the infrastructure sector and government intervention? Are there models for more integration without being labelled as unnecessary regulation? Is this where social licence is ultimately leading us?
HB: The interplay between the private sector and the public sector and infrastructure is not a static concept – it’s a fl uid line that moves. Social licence is a key ingredient in determining how it moves and where. In the current environment, it’s particularly acute and if the challenge isn’t met, particularly on the private sector side, then that inhibits the Government’s ability to partner more expansively with the private sector. That would be to everyone’s detriment and lead to a diminished agenda.
JB: Ash?
AJ: It does put the onus back on the private sector to prove that we understand purpose and social licence. The more we can demonstrate it is part of our business model, that we understand it, get it and can do it well, we’ll increase trust from the government. That would then hopefully reduce some of that regulatory burden.
JB: Do you think that construction fatigue and cumulative disruption in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne is affecting social licence? If so, how do you deal with it?
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AJ: Firstly, you’ve got the fatigue that comes with just so much going on. There are positives and negatives to that. For example, you might be on one project that’s doing really well but because a different project has a well-publicised community issue, you can get caught up in the halo effect of that. All of a sudden, if trees or acquisitions become an issue on another project, it’s a top priority for your project.
It can also be positive. When governments have done a really good job selling the benefits of the infrastructure spend and talking about overall disruption, everyone can benefit from that.
The biggest challenge is not on a cumulative impact, but on the complexity of our individual projects. It’s been a long time (if ever) since people have had to deal with a project that might take five years to finish in their backyard. So, we’re having to manage that journey and take people on a journey.
In the New South Wales context, if you think of projects like Light Rail or Sydney Metro, there was a lot of goodwill from the community starting those projects. The community just wanted to see that something was being done and they could concede, ‘Okay, this is going to benefit us’. At the start, we were probably able to get away with certain things that were quite disruptive because there was positivity and goodwill. However, when you get three years down the track and people are asking, ‘How is this still going on?’ and they’re starting to get tired and fatigued, they start to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.
How does the Government and the private sector keep them engaged, keep them positive and keep them on side throughout that journey? There’s no silver bullet to that, but that’s the complexity and the challenge we need to work through.
JB: What about from an operator’s perspective?
HB: It’s something we must manage carefully. One of the prisms through which we look at it, from a community and investor perspective, is how to carefully manage disruption to our assets through major construction periods. The proof is in the pudding, and we’ve had some pretty good experiences recently. We recently completed the $1.3 billion CityLink Tulla Widening project. In terms of historical traffic impacts from work in that corridor, the results were good relative to some other equivalent projects.
That tells you the level of focus that’s required. It’s got far-ranging impacts across multiple stakeholder groups – government, investors, community and the driving public. Every stakeholder is invested in that outcome, and if you get it wrong it can have serious implications.
JB: Thank you very much everyone and thanks for your insights.
Jodie Brough – Partner and Office Head (Sydney), Newgate Communications
Ms Brough has more than 20 years’ experience in communications as a Federal Press Gallery journalist, political adviser, senior communications specialist in the bureaucracy and as a consultant. She specialises in complex strategic projects for government and corporate clients, focusing on stakeholder and community engagement, issues management and reputation-related positioning.
Lead partner for Newgate’s transport and infrastructure practice, she has advised on some of Australia’s most significant infrastructure projects, including motorways, public transport, defence and urban renewal. She frequently advises on Public Private Partnerships, both for bid teams and governments, through all phases of project development from the bid through to planning, construction and operations.
Ms Brough also frequently works with clients managing reform or organisational change. She works extensively with government agencies managing changing community and stakeholder relationships, reflecting the central role communications and engagement play in managing risks, and delivering on outcomes.
Prior to consultancy, Ms Brough was a Sydney Morning Herald federal parliamentary press gallery journalist and worked in state government in New South Wales. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Macquarie University.
Henry Byrne – Group Executive Corporate Affairs, Transurban
Mr Byrne was appointed Group Executive Corporate Affairs in July 2017. Prior to this, he was General Manager of Corporate Affairs.
Mr Byrne started with Transurban in 2007 and has previously held management roles in Investor Relations and Operations within the business.
Prior to joining Transurban, Mr Byrne worked as a lawyer and financial journalist. Natalie Malligan – Head of Cities, Australia and New Zealand, Uber
Ms Malligan is Uber’s Head of Cities for Australia and New Zealand.
She is responsible for the growth and efficient operation of Uber’s ridesharing service, which now serves over three million people across more than 25 cities in the region.
Prior to joining Uber, Ms Malligan was Manager at Bain and Company’s Private Equity practice in San Francisco and Sydney.
She holds a combined Bachelor of Commerce and Law from the University of Sydney, and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University in New York.
Ashley Jarquin – General Manager, Communications and Marketing, John Holland
Ms Jarquin has more than 12 years’ experience leading communications and corporate affairs functions, predominantly in the transport and construction sector.
She has led the positioning, communication and issues management for many of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects, including Sydney Metro, Light Rail in Sydney and Newcastle, and reform of transport operations in New South Wales.
Ms Jarquin is passionate about the benefits and opportunities available to employees and communities through infrastructure investment, and champions the importance of putting people at the heart of project delivery. She leads her teams with empathy and creativity, and is always looking for opportunities to mentor, grow and develop others.
Having dealt with the gruelling demands of politics and 24/7 media cycles, Ms Jarquin is a strong advocate for work-life balance.
A partnerships approach helps organisations to deliver projects.
Infrastructure debates often focus on building assets, politics and funding. Less considered is how infrastructure enables city shaping and a better community experience, and whether projects translate into social and economic outcomes.
Professor Suresh Cuganesan, CEO of the John Grill Centre for Project Leadership at the University of Sydney, says that infrastructure projects require leaders who understand stakeholder perspectives, drive collaboration and embrace uncertainty.
‘Australia has a once-in-ageneration infrastructure opportunity,’ says Cuganesan. ‘But we will only realise its potential if it has enough current and future leaders with the capability to manage and govern increasingly large, complex projects.’
Cuganesan believes that a new paradigm in infrastructure projects is emerging. ‘The old approach of government and contractors developing a master plan, seeking comment and being constrained too early by a fixed funding envelope is failing. We must engage the community up-front on project concepts and think more broadly about outcomes, including the intangible aspects of place. This approach requires expanded skill sets in infrastructure leaders.’
Cuganesan’s view is timely. Australia will spend almost $100 billion on infrastructure this financial year – the most in three decades – according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. Federal and state governments are embarking on a wave of projects, amid a population boom.
The risk is that some projects experience budget overruns, costing the community billions of dollars and more again in indirect costs, including loss of community trust.
Sydney’s light rail project, for example, has been delayed and is in contractual dispute with a subcontractor. Melbourne’s controversial East West Link project cost $1.1 billion, only to be scrapped.
Cuganesan says budget overruns are too common in major projects. ‘Much work has been done to improve projects, yet we continue to see problems. We need to step back and consider if we are asking the right questions about why we are doing particular projects.’
The confluence of new and old forces is making infrastructure projects harder to deliver. Larger infrastructure projects are needed to keep up with population growth and urbanisation. Retrofitting congested capital cities with new infrastructure is challenging.
As project size grows, consortiums may have more partners, adding to complexity. Foreign and local entities working together and with different tiers of government mean that project leaders deal with larger stakeholder groups with differing perspectives.
At the same time, communities have become more organised and energised around infrastructure projects, and social media has empowered their protests. That, in turn, has added to project politicisation, and political uncertainty has compounded the problem.
‘Infrastructure leaders have to navigate a fast-moving, unpredictable project landscape,’ says Cuganesan. ‘It’s vital that they can “pivot” if needed, and that teams can draw on different disciplines to solve multidimensional problems.’
Centre’s unique role
John Grill AO, former CEO of WorleyParsons, established the centre in October 2012 with a landmark $20-million donation. The goal: to work with government and industry across all sectors to enhance the value of large-scale projects through education and partnerships.
The centre has achieved strong results. It has educated staff at many of Australia’s largest infrastructure companies, resources, banks, telcos and government departments; worked with boards; provided customised workshops; and helped to solve project leadership and governance problems.
Cuganesan says that the centre fills an important gap in Australia. ‘Infrastructure stakeholders recognise that their staff need expanded skills, and that the John Grill Centre is uniquely placed to provide them. They also know there is a gap in the talent pipeline as experienced people leave the sector, and knowledge and skills are lost.’
The centre’s learning approach has three key strengths, says Cuganesan. The first is a multidisciplinary approach. ‘As part of the University of Sydney, we’re able to draw on leading experts across disciplines. We’ve used psychologists and philosophers, for example, to present in courses and challenge how participants approach project leadership.’
The second strength is the program’s applied focus. ‘Our participants learn skills that they can immediately apply to their job,’ says Cuganesan. They learn about their project leadership style, strengths and weaknesses, and how they can be more effective.’
An emphasis on collaboration is the third strength. ‘We equip participants with skills to develop strongly aligned projects, to create a shared mission among multiple stakeholders, and to deliver outcomes for communities, rather than simply to execute projects. That relies on a strategic mindset and deep skills to work with stakeholders with different needs and perspectives.’
The approach is working. More than 85 per cent of course participants surveyed say that their relationships with direct reports, peers and other stakeholders improved after the program.
Four in five say that the training helped them to reposition themselves as leaders in their organisation, and many participants say they established innovative approaches to solve problems, achieve cost savings, better governance or other project outcomes.
Cuganesan is most pleased that participants feel more confident in their role, with a number moving up to more senior roles in their organisation. ‘They have higher job satisfaction because stakeholders are working towards a common goal, there are better team dynamics on projects, and they feel that they are making a difference for the community.’
Tailored services
The John Grill Centre’s flagship course is Executive Leadership in Major Projects (ELMP). The program runs across the year and includes an in-organisation project, leadership diagnostics (participants undertake a 360-degree review) and executive coaching.
The centre also provides customised leadership development programs specific to major projects. It is currently working with a multinational infrastructure company to upskill 50 of its global project directors and a major state government department to put more than 70 senior staff members through programs.
Governance is another focus. The centre has educated boards on major projects and infrastructure governance. ‘Boards often have to govern major projects, but most directors do not have specific skills in this area,’ says Cuganesan.
The centre also works with organisations on challenged projects. ‘We’ve helped to facilitate teams stuck on issues or at a stalemate with other stakeholders,’ says Cuganesan. ‘There is rising demand for this service and outcomes so far are encouraging.’
The centre’s research focuses on customer stewardship to support better practice, and to establish ways to build community and stakeholder confidence in infrastructure.
Cuganesan is optimistic about the future of Australian infrastructure and the John Grill Centre’s role. ‘By developing a new generation of infrastructure leaders, and equipping them with broader skills, the centre can have significant economic and social impact. Great infrastructure shapes cities, builds nations and, most of all, enriches communities.’ ♦
To learn more about the John Grill Centre of Project Leadership, visit www.sydney.edu.au/john-grill-centre.
Wonder women in construction
Empowering women to boldly explore a career in construction is helping to change and revitalise one of Australia’s most critical business sectors.
You don’t need superhero powers to see the galaxy of positives that having a broader and more diverse workplace brings to the property and construction industry. From new skill sets to new ways of thinking, new approaches to challenges encountered and new opportunities to grow and diversify, the list is endless.
Celebrating 100 years of outstanding industry achievement, Hansen Yuncken is one company that is actively striving to expand its female workforce strength across its national business operations.
With board member Louise Hansen, four female members on the Executive Management Team and a growing number of young women joining the company, Hansen Yuncken is fast becoming a first port of call for women looking to take their place at the table.
One of the most notable success stories for Hansen Yuncken has been Elizabeth Matthews, who is currently the Project Manager on the $160-million expansion of the Parklea Correctional Centre in New South Wales. Matthews has been with the company since 2012, having fallen into construction when she was just 18 years old.
‘At the time, I’d been accepted into university to study French and Russian,’ she recalls. ‘A friend of mine was the daughter of a local builder, who offered me a summer job prior to attending university. After a few weeks, I realised this was for me, and I cancelled my languages degree and switched to construction management. The rest is history!’
Commencing her career journey in the United Kingdom, Matthews headed to Adelaide and joined Hansen Yuncken, where she took on a challenging role of Site Manager on the $2-billion Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) project.
‘Hansen Yuncken has been fantastic in supporting and growing my career,’ she says. ‘It appointed me as a Site Manager on the RAH at a time when the business and the industry in Adelaide had never seen a female Site Manager.’
While her career to date has been notable for the success she has achieved in her diverse roles, Matthews is the first to admit that the industry can still be a tough place for women, and, like many of her peers, she is determined to be an agent of change.
‘I have always felt that I was treated equally in the industry, and have always gained respect from my peers,’ she says. ‘In saying that, it is a tough industry that can be quite aggressive, and one of my challenges is to not adapt or change my behaviour to suit those around me.’
Seeking positives from potentially negative and unwarranted perceptions is one way she stays focused. ‘I think one of the biggest challenges women in construction face in site-based management roles is the perception of being weak and naive,’ she says. ‘I often use this to my advantage, though, as people tend to underestimate me.’
While Matthews has witnessed much change over the past five years, she still believes that more needs to be done to better support young women like her in construction.
‘I’m lucky in that Hansen Yuncken has policies in place to support me as I move through my career – both as a woman and a construction professional,’ she says. ‘For our industry as a whole, however, I think the next big focus needs to be on flexibility and retention of women in the industry.’ ♦
To find out more, visit www.hansenyuncken.com.au.
Designing smart energy and transport solutions to move and connect people
While Australian cities are among some of the most livable on Earth, country leaders and citizens have concerns about accessibility to urban centres, the cost of energy supply, the severity of waste production, the pressures that ecological systems are under, and the climate change issues our communities face.
We now also operate in an era in which rapidly advancing technology and data are being used to achieve valuable insights to support strategic decision-making and to tackle some of these challenges.
From the delivery of the iconic Snowy Mountains Scheme, one of the largest and most complex hydroelectric schemes in the world, through to the delivery of some of Australia’s most significant transport corridors, SMEC has a long history of providing innovative solutions and advanced engineering design across the power, water and transport sectors.
SMEC has been involved in numerous landmark energy projects throughout Australia, including Snowy 2.0 in New South Wales, Gannawarra Energy Storage System in Victoria and Kennedy Energy Park (grid-connected solar, wind and battery) in Queensland.
Large-scale solar power is a growing source of mainstream energy within Australia, and SMEC is now positioned as the leading provider of project development, detailed design and owners’ engineering services for solar farms across Australia.
‘The National Electricity Market (NEM) faces numerous transitional challenges over the coming decades, so SMEC’s design involvement in critical projects, including Snowy 2.0 and early uptake of advancements in power system stability technology, is helping to make those important transitions happen as Australia moves to a lower-carbon future,’ says Graeme Pollock, Market Director, Energy and Resources, SMEC.
‘We’re seeing greater demand for next-generation renewables and firming technologies – waste to energy, solar and wind linked to synchronous condensers, battery storage, pumped hydro and advanced power system controls.’
SMEC currently has more than 6000 megawatts of new-generation projects in development, design, construction and early operation, which are using SMEC’s expertise to guide them.
‘These projects will contribute to the lower-carbon transition that will see much more distributed and diverse power generation than has traditionally been the case in Australia, with a focus on enhancing grid reliability and stability.’
SMEC has also been focused on pioneering new technologies to optimise data-driven decision-making, to support current projects and to enable our partners and clients to find their competitive edge.
On the Streamlining Hoddle Street project in Victoria, SMEC collaborated with frontier technology company Snobal to enrich stakeholder engagement and transform designs through the application of virtual reality. Subsequently, SMEC became the first engineering design company in Australia to conduct a comprehensive road safety audit using virtual reality, which led to tangible design savings.
Daniel Gregor, National Manager Advisory, says, ‘Our safety auditor found four to five items that we wouldn’t have identified until build stage. Virtual reality saved time and money, and it made the concept safer. It’s assisted with stakeholder engagement and expanded the knowledge of our people’.
Innovation and technical excellence continue to be key focus areas for SMEC. The organisation is constantly evolving through its thinking, approach, technologies and systems. ♦
Moree Solar Farm
