Decisions that cost schedule or money, and what they changed

Hiring a closing station's electricians without costing them their redundancy

In 2023 Pennardine needed about 600 additional substation electricians, technicians and powerline workers for two new transmission projects starting in 2024. Another generator had announced that one of its coal-fired stations in New South Wales would close in mid-2025, with about 420 employees. Its electricians and control technicians had many of the skills we lacked, and mining companies were already recruiting them.

The obvious course was to offer jobs immediately. Our two project directors wanted the people on site in 2024, when our need peaked. I opposed immediate starts because a station employee who resigned before closure would forfeit a redundancy payment that, for long-serving staff, exceeded a year's pay. Asking them to give that up would have bought us a few dozen people and the distrust of the rest. I proposed conditional offers made in 2024, with start dates on the day after each person's last shift, skills assessment paid for by us while they were still employed at the station, and labour hire to bridge our gap for about ten months. Our chief financial officer estimated the bridge at A$6.8 million. The union representing our powerline workers also objected to any shortened route into line work, and our head of safety shared its concern.

We settled on two routes. Station electricians could move into substation roles through recognition of prior learning and a supervised period of twelve weeks. Anyone moving into line work completed the full conversion training, about eighteen months, without shortcuts. We agreed the timetable with the station's owner, who allowed assessments on site and shared training records with employees' consent.

Of 222 station employees we assessed, we made 181 offers and 167 started with us. A year after the closure, 152 were still with us, and 41 had qualified in substation roles that previously took us two years to fill. The labour-hire bridge cost A$6.8 million, slightly more than planned.

We now align start dates with a closing employer's timetable as a matter of policy. What I would change is how we briefed families. Twenty-six people withdrew during assessment after learning how often field roles travel, and most of them told us that a briefing for partners at the start would have changed the conversation at home.

Ending single-person visits on a contested line route

In late 2024 Pennardine was building a section of a new 500 kV line across grazing and cropping land where many landholders opposed the route. Our client, the network owner, held the easements; our liaison officers arranged access, managed gates and biosecurity, and walked ahead of our crews. In six months they reported 37 incidents of abuse or intimidation, including a vehicle blocked on a farm track for ninety minutes. Two officers were on leave with psychological injuries, and four of eleven had resigned.

The project director, a capable engineer, wanted to keep the schedule and treat the problem through de-escalation training and the employee assistance programme. Our contract carried liquidated damages for late completion of the section. I argued that the hazard came from how the work was organised: officers visited alone, gave access notices the client had drafted, and could not delay a crew without his approval. Training would not change any of that.

I proposed three controls. Every visit to a property where a landholder had objected would be made by two people. A liaison officer could stand a crew down at a gate without approval, and nobody would be asked to justify that decision on the day. And we would ask the client to change the wording and timing of its access notices, which landholders found peremptory. The project director put his objection in writing, and our managing director accepted my proposal on condition that the cost was reported to the board.

We gave up about seven weeks of schedule on that section and absorbed A$3.2 million in standby, extra staff and recovery work, after negotiating relief on part of the liquidated damages. The client rewrote its notices after a meeting I attended with its land team.

In the following six months reported incidents fell to nine. No further psychological injury claims were made, and the two officers returned on graduated plans. Paired visits are now standard on contested routes, and our psychosocial risk register records hazards created by clients' processes.

What I would do differently is measurement. I learnt later that officers had stopped reporting minor incidents because nothing changed when they did. The true count in that first period was higher than 37, and I should have asked earlier why the reports had slowed.

Giving a joint committee control of the offshore roster

In 2019 Tessaline Energy began bargaining for a new agreement covering about 780 offshore employees on two platforms off Western Australia. The previous agreement let the company extend the standard fourteen-day swing to twenty-one days during maintenance campaigns with seven days' notice. We had used that right four times in two years. The unions' main claim was to remove it, and protected action ballots were in prospect. A stoppage would have threatened LNG cargoes the joint venture had contracted.

Our chief operating officer, Neville Dunmore, wanted to keep the right and offer more money instead. He argued, reasonably, that maintenance campaigns depended on it and that relief crews would cost several million dollars a year. I had read the fatigue data and the exit interviews. Swing extensions accounted for a disproportionate share of resignations among experienced technicians, and the households of offshore workers bore their cost without any say.

I proposed that the company give up unilateral extensions entirely. Roster changes would require agreement through a joint committee of four company and four employee representatives, advised by an independent fatigue scientist, with unresolved disputes going to the Fair Work Commission under the agreement's dispute procedure. In exchange the unions would agree a fixed annual calendar of maintenance campaigns, published a year ahead. Our chief executive supported the proposal after a long meeting in which Neville's objections were heard in full.

We gave up operational flexibility and accepted about A$4.1 million a year in additional relief crews. The agreement was approved by 84% of employees who voted, without industrial action. Turnover among experienced offshore technicians fell from 11% to 6% over two years.

The committee proved its value in March 2020, when pandemic quarantine rules made fortnightly crew changes impractical. It agreed temporary twenty-eight-day swings, with fatigue controls and extra leave, in nine days. Employees accepted the change because they had shaped it.

What I would do differently is the committee's procedure. It had no deadline for decisions, and some ordinary roster questions took three months. I would set time limits from the start, and I would have included the contractor workforce, who worked beside our employees under rosters the committee never saw.

First Nations employment measured after construction ends

When I joined Pennardine in 2021, First Nations people made up 2.1% of our direct workforce. Our clients' contracts set First Nations participation requirements measured in hours worked during construction, and we generally met them through roles in traffic control, vegetation clearing and site services that ended when a line was energised. On one finished project, only four of 61 First Nations employees were still with us a year later.

I proposed changing what we aimed for. Instead of meeting each contract's hours with short-term roles, we would recruit First Nations apprentices and trainees into powerline, electrical and vegetation management trades that our maintenance contracts would need for decades, and we would give Aboriginal-owned businesses easement maintenance work beyond construction. Our commercial director disagreed. Apprentices produce fewer hours in their first two years, and he expected us to fall short on at least one contract, with a financial consequence and a damaged client relationship. A client's contract manager made the same point.

Our managing director accepted the change, and we fell short. On one project in 2023 we finished 1.4 points below the participation requirement and accepted a A$410,000 abatement. I explained the reason to the client in writing and, with their agreement, reported progress on apprenticeship completion alongside hours.

We worked with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations along our routes and asked our First Nations employees to shape the programme. On their advice we introduced cultural leave, recruited mentors from among our own First Nations tradespeople and changed our rule that apprentices must relocate between projects.

By June 2026 First Nations people made up 6.4% of our direct workforce. Of 314 First Nations employees, 118 hold apprenticeships or traineeships, and 73% of those who joined in 2023 remain with us. Two Aboriginal-owned businesses now hold easement maintenance contracts worth A$11 million a year.

What changed is that our board now sees retention to qualification beside participation hours. What I would do differently is the order of conversations. I set the direction first and sought community advice second, and the first cohort's experience suffered for it. Several early apprentices left before cultural leave existed, and they should not have needed to.