Robert Jones: Continuity of staff, workflow crucial

For us, the ability to maintain a constant workload is critical to retaining staff - and workforce is a priority.

We entered the market in New Zealand about seven years ago and we have been encouraged by our clients to build a capability that would bring added competition within the infrastructure sector, particularly with the larger civil projects which previously had been dominated by one or two local players.

We have done that, and more than 95 per cent of our employees are New Zealanders who we have trained and developed to manage large, complex engineering projects. Having done this, they want to continue to work on these types of projects.

Leighton Contractors is delivering around $450 million of capital works projects in New Zealand either in joint ventures or as part of an alliance with our partners.

All this work is in the public infrastructure sector. The majority is with the New Zealand Transport Agency and the remainder with Ontrack and the Auckland City Council.

Although we also operate in the building sector and have building-type projects here it is likely our workload in the short- to medium-term will focus on the road, rail and energy sectors.

Without continuity of work in this large civil projects sector, our workers will naturally look elsewhere to further their careers.

The most obvious location will be Australia. This problem is not unique to Leighton, and the consequences for the New Zealand economy are grim, as the local industry has incurred a significant cost of building the resource and capability with the likelihood that much of the capability will move offshore to seek better job security and better wages. The point I make is that the consequence of irregular peaks and troughs in bringing these large infrastructure projects to the market will result in the industry and the taxpayer bearing the cost of repeating the training and development cycle every few years.

Leighton is working with the Transport Agency as part of a industry liaison group to provide more certainty around the timing of large road projects coming to the market.

On the subject of Australian and Chinese firms bidding projects in here, this can only be healthy in driving more competition and bringing experience and innovations to drive project costs down. We have received positive encouragement from many New Zealand suppliers, subcontractors and consultants who feel they just don't get the opportunity to bid to some of the larger local contractors who have extensive supply chains and strategic supply agreements within their organisations.

They consider it a waste of time bidding in many instances. With organisations like Leighton and other overseas bidders, they know they have a real chance of winning the work.

This can only be healthy for the wider New Zealand economy.

* Robert Jones is Leighton Contractors' New Zealand manager