Having fleshed out his company's recent rare foray into software development to help LNG players deliver productivity step changes with the Clough Automated Management System, Bennett showed a chart revealing Australia was still "way up the curve" on wages compared to many other global jurisdictions. 

 

"There are a lot of things in Australia that we enjoy - the higher wages for one - and that's something we're not going to change, and we shouldn't need to," Bennett said, addressing a business lunch in Perth last week.

 

Ian Blevin, managing director of Perth-based high-pressure water technology company WOMA Australia, is expanding the company's new Henderson base, but was cognisant of the challenges Bennett spoke about.

 

He said that by multi-skilling his employees, their jobs were not only being fortified but productivity was being optimised.

 

He related the attitude in the midst of a downturn to that which the Zimbabwe-born Blevin experienced back in his home country, when it was suffering from international sanctions during its civil war, which meant it could not import technology or products to improve productivity.

 

"As a people we became self-sustaining in our ability to invent and make things to keep the economy going," Blevin told Energy News.

 

"We were able to become one of Africa's breadbasket countries despite the international sanctions. It is possible for people to show initiative rather than following the norms."

 

Similarly at WOMA, he realised there was no use having a certain number of boilermakers, fitters and engineers to cover the rainy days, so looked instead at how to sharpen the workforce size and multi-skill it.

 

"We looked at multi-skilling our resource offering and location not to become a jack of all trades but to remain a specialist over a number of fields to ensure we're always of value to someone," he said.

 

"WOMA is a close team of people that's hard to get into and which not a lot of people leave, which is not so much my doing but the people's attitude. 

 

"We don't have a single casual and haven't had one for 12 years, with a couple of part-timers in admin. But all blokes at the back are full to overtime.

 

"By multiskilling people we've been able to enable them to keep busy for the full day, and minimise downtime and maximised their productive labour time so we're more able to predict exactly how many people we need all the time."

 

 

Yet Bennett also warned that while Australia's oil patch had done much to drive costs out of business to make developments more attractive, "so has everybody else".

 

"New investment destinations are emerging to offer our clients a lot more diverse opportunities, which makes things more imperative for us," he said.

 

"We need to be working more closely in partnership with our clients to develop practical solutions to provide a step change across productivity, cost, quality and safety.

 

"Time is money. During the big construction phase of Australia's LNG boom, projects were seeing cash outflows of $500 million a month, about of half of which was just related to being on site.

 

"So creating the right environment to create operational excellence is a must by doing the correct thing correctly, to create efficient projects in an efficient timeframe.

 

"Projects have seen huge cost blowouts in Australia, a lot of which were because we [as an industry] didn't spend the necessary time in the concept and planning phase to drive down costs as much as possible."

 

He said employee engagement was vital from the start, with research suggesting productivity improvements from anywhere between 18-200%.

 

"By measuring why and not what, we create the opportunity to better plan the outcome to develop solutions according to the level of influence they can have over an outcome," he said.

 

"Providing the opportunity to engage in robust, up-front initial planning of programs with our clients is essential to ensure that the needs are aligned, and that we work thoroughly in planning ahead of project commencement."