Defence-Aurecon Ascend Program, Australia
The Ascend Program is designed to support women to step into leadership roles and drive greater gender equity and inclusion within the Defence workforce.
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For more than 60 years, Shoalwater Bay Training Area has played a vital role in Australian and international military training and is the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) primary training area for large-scale, joint-force military training exercises.
There was a pressing need to upgrade the area’s facilities and infrastructure to continue supporting training activities. Aurecon was appointed as the project manager and contract administrator for the upgrade of the urban operations training facility, permanent camp precinct, airfield and area access roads, beach landing area, creek crossings, and field hospital site.
In this role, we embraced the principles of environmental sustainability and conservation, and quality and longevity of assets, to provide the area with a legacy of retaining cultural, social and physical connections.
The project represents a circular economy by reusing existing assets and minimising the number of new assets built from carbon intensive concrete. It also promotes an improved circular economy outcome by promoting local product and services procurement processes.
Remediation of the facilities and infrastructure ensures the area’s long-term sustainability to enable Defence personnel to train more effectively, support new military capabilities, and minimise the impact of training activities on the surrounding environment.
The decision was made to remediate, where possible, existing buildings and infrastructure in line with value for money considerations, environmental sustainability and design optimisation.
Shoalwater Bay Training Area covers 274,000 ha of land and 180,000 ha of ocean. Within this large and complex project were project management challenges to overcome. Budget, timeframe and costing structures required sophisticated coordination and collaboration between stakeholders.
The project’s multi-use design demanded complex planning to execute multiple deliverables in a time-sensitive environment. Strong leadership and collaboration between Aurecon and Defence, together with contractors and industry partners, optimised planning and delivery of the project. This included robustly administering contract drafting, together with flexible negotiations, to adjust to project changes.
The project was completed within budget, in part due to the control the project took over high-risk elements such as supply of concrete and rationalisation of materials to ensure that subcontractors were able to minimise risk-pricing.
The open and inclusive procurement approach was another factor in the project’s success. Historically, a project of this scale might include industry briefings for only a small number of major contractors.
Aurecon and Defence instead conducted early industry briefings for all interested construction companies (ranging from small to large) which resulted in close to 80 per cent of subcontractor businesses registered locally. This resulted in works being subcontracted to a number of Indigenous Business Enterprises, also supporting Indigenous representation in the construction workforce.
The project represents the first of the major managing contracts to be signed in line with the Department of Defence Local Industry Capability Plan, intended to provide opportunities for Australian companies to compete on merit for defence work. Packaging plans of the procurement strategy were shaped in a way that created subcontractor work packages of a size that suited the general spread of local business capability and resource capacity. The positive legacy of this approach is the opportunity that subcontractors might have to tender for future projects with knowledge and experience gained by working to Defence standards.
Aurecon appreciated the importance of integrating stakeholders into the design and planning decisions early in the project. This process commenced from the early pre-planning phase with the development of a stakeholder register. This was included into the project’s community consultation and communications strategy to provide local residents and stakeholders with an opportunity to provide input, or raise concerns, relating to the project.
The project team also worked accordingly with the Darumbal people, Traditional Owners of the Shoalwater Bay Training Area, to conduct extensive cultural heritage investigations and obtain feedback on infrastructure designs.
As areas of the ocean within the training area are designated as part of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, engagement with groups with environmental interests was critical. Before any works commenced on land, the environmental condition was well documented and compliance was ensured under the primary environment and heritage legislation for the Commonwealth, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
Engagement with stakeholders and the community continued through the project’s design and delivery phases to provide visibility of each phase to preserve cultural, social and environmental heritage.
The overall benefits of this project are far reaching. It enables the continued sustainability of Defence exercises and sustains the quality and longevity of existing infrastructure for air, sea and land manoeuvres.
But also, it brings lasting and tangible benefits for regional jobs, skills and the local economy, paving the way to ensure the local community benefits from other projects in the future.
The Ascend Program is designed to support women to step into leadership roles and drive greater gender equity and inclusion within the Defence workforce.
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