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Boggabilla Project builds trust, skills and communities
The Boggabilla Project is an excellent example of industry and training bodies cooperating to successfully help with and encourage the development of Indigenous communities.
The project involves Wild Geese Building & Maintenance, Maunsells (head contractor), the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE), a town council and an Indigenous community. Together they are developing a blueprint of best practice for construction training for Indigenous Australians.
Wild Geese, which is based in the Northern Territory, conducts work throughout the Top End as well as in Queensland and New South Wales. Boggabilla is a small town in New South Wales, just south of the Queensland border, and the Aboriginal community, Toomelah Mission, is just 15 kilometres further south.
‘We do a lot of remote construction projects and like to train the local Indigenous employees as we progress’, said Pat Hewitt, Managing Director of Wild Geese.
‘When we won a tender for a four-year housing project in Boggabilla/Toomelah through Maunsells, there was a requirement to train Aboriginal men from the Toomelah Mission which fitted with our company values’, Pat said. According to Pat, they had worked closely with BIITE in the past and thought this was an appropriate project on which to collaborate.
BIITE, which is also based in the Northern Territory, specialises in providing vocational education and training for Indigenous Australians in remote communities in northern and central Australia.
According to Phil Wall, Head of Centre Enterprise and Apprenticeships at BIITE, ‘ensuring a clear and effective communication strategy is our first priority on a project like this and while meetings are not always “stress free” they do provide an opportunity to table and resolve issues’.
For the project, BIITE and Wild Geese management meet fortnightly, usually by phone hook-up. In addition there is a regular on-site meeting in Toomelah, which is attended by Maunsells, Wild Geese, the Toomelah Council and BIITE.
‘The trainees are also included in the process and they developed a code of practice, which is the basis for communication and expectations’, said Phil. ‘The code has proven its worth and is a key tool when addressing issues which affect training and project progress.’
‘Getting the right participants is critical to any recruitment and retention strategy and Toomelah Council played a major role in the identification of suitable course participants who could contribute to the community in the long term’, said Phil.
Once position requirements were finalised, each candidate was interviewed and put through a skills audit. Identified skills were attributed to candidates when training plans were designed.
‘We also worked hard to develop strong mentoring relationships with our trainees to help manage issues such as conflict resolution, family demands and budgeting that affect performance at work’, said Phil.
Another key factor has been the delivery of remote training. BIITE are onsite once a month and visits are planned to coincide with work schedules. It has also helped that many members of the on-site leadership team have a Certificate IV in Workplace Assessment and Training.
By the end of 2006, eight trainees will have completed Certificate III in General Construction—a great source of pride for all those involved. This also means that employment opportunities for them, such as additional construction phases and the ongoing maintenance of existing housing, now look certain.
Pat is pleased with this outcome. ‘Our intention was to develop a model that can be replicated. We now have real life insight into the costs and structure of such projects which we hope will result in wider application of the model by us and others’.