Where people decisions are made in energy construction and operations

Coal-fired stations employ electricians, fitters, operators and control technicians whose skills overlap substantially with substation and line work, and much less with each other than job titles suggest. I map those overlaps role by role with our technical training managers and the registered training organisations that assess us, then decide which skills can be recognised and which have to be taught again. A station electrician can often become a substation technician after a structured assessment and a short supervised period; becoming a powerline worker who climbs and works near live conductors takes much longer. The commercial decision that matters most is timing. A worker who resigns before a closure can lose a redundancy payment worth a year's pay, so I align start dates with the closing employer's timetable and cover the gap in other ways. I also talk to partners and families, because a field job that travels changes a household more than a pay rate does.

I have bargained for coal station, pipeline construction, offshore LNG and transmission construction workforces under successive Australian workplace laws. My practice is to bring the operating model into the bargaining room: the roster, the travel pattern, the crew size and the project schedule, with the cost of each claim set against what it changes for the people covered. At Tessaline I proposed giving a joint committee control of offshore roster changes, which cost money and avoided a dispute. At Pennardine I negotiate with the unions representing powerline workers and electrical trades, and I keep a clear line between what our own agreements settle and what our clients' contracts impose on us. I would rather explain a concession to our board than have an agreement approved by a narrow vote that leaves the real disagreement unsettled. I do not run bargaining as a contest of timetables, and I tell our negotiators so in writing.

The work health and safety laws in the states where we operate now treat psychosocial hazards expressly, and regulators expect employers to identify and control them like any other hazard. In our business the most serious psychosocial hazards are not in offices. They arise when liaison officers and crews meet landholders who oppose a line, when crews work long stretches away from home and when supervisors are pressed to hold a schedule that someone else set. I run psychosocial risk assessments with the people exposed, not about them, and I insist that controls change the work itself: paired visits, authority to stand down, limits on consecutive days and reporting routes that do not pass through the supervisor under pressure. Employee assistance programmes matter, but they come after the controls. I report psychosocial incidents to our People and Safety Committee alongside physical injuries, including hazards that originate in a client's decisions.

Every transmission builder in eastern Australia is hiring from the same limited pool of powerline workers, riggers and high-voltage electricians, and bidding wars mostly move people between projects without adding any. I plan supply across our order book rather than project by project: which crews can move from a line being energised to the next one, when apprentices will qualify, and where a regional start date would collide with another contractor's. I prefer direct employment to labour hire for core field roles, because labour-hire crews leave with their knowledge of our safety systems, but I use labour hire deliberately for peaks and for bridging gaps such as a station closure. I work with clients on the sequencing of start dates where their contracts allow it. At Pennardine we have grown apprentices from 140 to 420 and now track completion and retention to qualification, not intake.

Our clients' contracts usually set First Nations participation requirements, measured in hours worked or spending during construction. Those measures are legitimate, but they can be met with short roles that end when a line is energised. I have tried to measure what remains afterwards: apprenticeships and traineeships in trades our maintenance contracts will need, employees still with us two years after joining and contracts held by Aboriginal-owned businesses beyond construction. That work depends on relationships with Traditional Owner groups and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations along our routes, which I approach as their communities' representatives rather than as recruitment channels. Our First Nations employees advised us on cultural leave, family obligations and mentoring, and their advice changed our policies more than any external benchmark. I am careful not to speak for communities, and I describe our results as a contractor's results, with the limits that implies.