This NAIDOC Week, create examines the importance of engineers collaborating with Indigenous communities when working on construction projects.
When Marc Kenney, Managing Director of construction engineering firm Mettle, takes on a new project – a shopping centre refurbishment, a heritage building redevelopment – he often finds himself calling up James Alley.
Alley is Director of AJA Solutions, a consultancy that helps businesses strengthen their community engagement strategies, particularly with First Nations communities.
Kenney speaks with pride when he considers the results of his collaborations with Alley: a Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) that delivered impact beyond expectation, for instance, or projects that delivered well above their Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) targets.
One of these involved the restoration of the Youngs Building, a visually distinct Federation-era warehouse in the Brisbane CBD.
“Ninety-three Edward Street was a refurbishment of a heritage-listed building in Brisbane. We had an IPP target of four per cent combined hours and spend, and we got 6.06 [per cent],” Kenney said. “It was a tough job because heritage constraints always make it a little bit tougher, but the larger challenges there were that the building’s all timber-framed, so there are fire-rating issues.”
The timber columns and floors, too, posed challenges that wouldn’t be apparent with more hefty concrete supports, as well as acoustics and materials handling in an ageing structure.
But one challenge Mettle was determined to overcome was achieving its commitments to the Indigenous community.
“When Mettle got up and running, I had the chance, among a million other things, to have a think about what an ideal business looks like,” Kenney said. “Our mantra since we got the business going has been ‘good people doing good things together’.”
Engaging early
That’s one arena in which Alley’s advice has paid off for Kenney.
The two met in 2023, when Alley was working as National Indigenous Affairs Manager for the Australian subsidiary of an international contractor.
“We were getting our Reflect RAP up and running, and after a yarn or two with James we realised he could help us out,” Kenney said. “We realised that he could help us with some of our aspirational goals as well, which were about setting IPP targets on non-regulated projects.”
By then, Alley had been working on Indigenous community outreach activities for years, beginning with an approach he refined during construction of Townsville’s Queensland Country Bank Stadium, the home of NRL club the North Queensland Cowboys.
During the project’s initial stages, Alley approached one of the companies involved and promised he could help make them a leader in Indigenous participation.
“I said, ‘if you’re looking for someone to help you in Townsville, I’m from there. I’ve already got existing relationships’,” he recalled. “I ended up writing an Indigenous Economic Opportunities Plan (EOP] from scratch, and then I had to present that to the Traditional Owners up there, the Department of State Development, and representatives from the Department of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Partnerships.
“That became the guiding document to help try and meet our strategies on the project.”
Alley’s EOP included detailed approaches for engaging with local Indigenous people and businesses, as well as how to meet targets on Indigenous employment.
But until it’s implemented, a framework is only worth the paper that it’s published on.
“Early engagement was the key, because it allowed us to understand who we needed to engage with,” Alley said. “We ended up developing what we called at the time an Indigenous employment training steering committee. That involved key stakeholders locally – and we did extend the invitation to Traditional Owners to be a part of it.”
Having that steering committee meant essential representatives would have a voice on the project. It would also facilitate information sharing, as well as identify challenges and places where support was needed.
In the end, work on the stadium employed 141 Indigenous people and achieved 11.6 per cent IPP for a target that had been originally set at 6.6 per cent.
That experience – and those results – became the basis of Alley’s Indigenous participation model, a framework that he brings to each new project with which he’s involved.
“The model was about getting consistency, setting up steering committees, and trying to build relationships with key stakeholders who could add value,” he said.
Projects that Alley has worked on since have seen the incorporation of Indigenous business forums, job-seeker events, and efforts to expand the capacity and capability of the contractors he’s worked with.
“Indigenous companies don’t want a hand-out; they just want an opportunity,” he said. “Sometimes when you’re working with a tier-one company, it is hard because packages are large, and some of these Indigenous companies can’t deliver on big packages. So then we looked at how we could connect them with a contractor that could maybe subcontract them.”
Case study: How to successfully integrate Indigenous knowledge in an engineering project
“Mate, we need some help here”
Sometimes Mettle will set an IPP target, and Kenney will find that the numbers are falling short.
“This is where James comes in handy,” he said. “If we’re hitting our hours target and then we’re struggling with trying to find spend targets, this is where we [say to] James, ‘hey mate, we need some help here’.”
Mettle will have a construction manager meet with Alley right from a project’s outset. Alley conducts demographic research on the area, then advises on the suitability and size of a target.
This approach is the right thing to do, Kenney said, but he’s happy to point out that it makes business sense too.
“We have been doing a few defence jobs, and we’re looking to increase our footprint there,” he said. “Getting business-ready for that, where [there is a] mandatory requirement – looking at it from a straight business point of view, it made sense to.
“Generally, though, I think you don’t need to be regulated to do good things.”
