CICA CHAIRMAN, NT
MANAGING A DOWNTURN In this series of reports, Cranes and Lifting speaks to each of the CICA state chairmen to discuss the challenges they face over the next 12 months. Bart Sutherland, CICA chairman NT, speaks about some of the challenges facing CICA Members in the Northern Territory. SUTHERLAND RUNS COMPLETE CRANE Hire, a company he started 20 years ago. Most of the time you will find him either out driving the crane or dogging the crane, he’s hands on with his business. His association with cranes began with powerline companies putting up power poles in Queensland, he then went to Darwin for a weeks’ holiday and he’s still there 30 years later. Sutherland explains the background to his involvement with CICA. “For some time, we had been talking about getting a Northern Territory crane association up and running. It’s always hard trying to get something new started and just as we started to get some momentum CICA came along with the plan to form one association and bring all the state association into line with one national body. “I thought this was a good idea and I ended up on a committee to figure out how we could make it all happen. Essentially, this committee came up with some great ideas on how we thought it could all work and how it could be structured. Cheryl Woodhardt was on the committee and she took the recommendations back to the board. The One Association Project was a reason I nominated for the board and was elected; that was six years ago,” he said. “Like so many things in life, it’s no good complaining about things on the sideline. Sometimes, personal involvement is required. “Today, we have 10 or 12 CICA members in the association and these include major players like Tutts Heavy Lifting and Freo Cranes both of which have branches in Darwin. We have members in Alice Springs but being 1500 kms away we don’t see a lot of them,” said Sutherland. 24 / CAL January 2020
Sutherland explains the challenges facing Northern Territory economy. “We had one major project, a gas plant which was supposed to be a $34billion project. They tell me the final figure was $64 billion, but everyone was very excited about how much the project was going to bring to Darwin. It brought in a lot of people ‘looking for gold’ but it really didn’t do anything for the local economy.
“Today, we have 10 or 12 CICA members in the association and these include major players like Tutts Heavy Lifting and Freo Cranes both of which have branches in Darwin.
“The government spent a lot of money on infrastructure thinking they were going to get it back because of the volume of people the project would attract, but it just didn’t happen. Lots of companies went to work on the project but didn’t do well. They hadn’t factored in the costs of Greenfields Agreements and they didn’t forecast or budget for the delays in work due to paperwork. We’ve had half a dozen large companies go broke over the gas plant and since then the government has had very little money to spend on infrastructure. Tourism has tapered right off because the price for accommodation went through the roof whilst the gas plant was being built, that filters through the system and people just don’t come,” said Sutherland. According to Sutherland mining and oil explorations have been mainstay
Bart Sutherland, CICA Chairman NT says the Northern Territory faces a number of challenges. www.cranesandlifting.com.au
