Guide to help major projects deliver on local promise

A new handbook developed in Queensland is hoped to ease the path for busy project directors to include local content in a way that delivers maximum economic impact for regional areas. Hughes et al principal Ben Hughes has written ‘Project Director's Local Content Guidance Notes’ after 12 years’ experience in guiding local content on major projects. He jokes that it’s basically ‘a dummy's guide to local content for project executives who thought they were building some infrastructure, only to find they’re having to reengineer an economy’. His free guide comes at a time when there is a lot of expectation surrounding the impact of upcoming major projects on regional communities. “There's definitely a pressure on projects right now to be the economic saviours,” Mr Hughes said. “And there are a lot of things projects can do by spending a small amount of time on defining local content. It can really make a massive difference.” The guide is aimed squarely at the people with the most direct influence in building local content into major infrastructure or resources projects. People in those senior positions generally wanted to create better local content outcomes, but they had a lot of other things on their plate when it came to delivering a major project, Mr Hughes said. "What our experience has taught however, is if those project executives can lead the local content culture and create a local content framework then it can unite a project," he said. Hughes et al principal Ben Hughes. "When that happens it’s rare to find anyone in the project who doesn’t want better local content and unifying the project team can be significant." The guide is designed to make the most of the very limited time project directors have to direct their attention to local content – and at the right time in the project - through tools including action templates. With so many definitions of local content, the most important thing was that projects in the approvals, tendering and early works phases knew what local meant to them, and what local meant to the region they were operating in, Mr Hughes said. “Project directors can request a local content briefing, facilitate a workshop to define their local content strategy and their team can revise what we're calling the new local content plan, which is a LEAP (Local Economic Alignment Participation) plan. Finally, depending on their scope they can issue a job description to hire someone as a local content advisor,” he said. “Project directors can do all of that in five hours or less if they want to. Amongst managing all the risk of the project and the health and safety of workers, not to mention the engineering, construction, commerciality and just about everything else they have on their plate, five hours can be hard to find. “We’ve picked on the project director a bit by addressing the guidance to them, but that’s more to do with the formality of project plan writing. In reality local content is a team effort, so there’s a bunch of background reading which we have in there too. We hope it helps a discussion amongst the whole project team.” ‘Project Director's Local Content Guidance Note’ is presented as a PDF release, with hyperlinks for further reading and reference. It is available at http://www.hughesetal.com.au/

Guide to help major projects deliver on local promise

Industry Queensland

Related News

QAL upgrade attracts $94m federal grant

Bridge damage under scrutiny after excavator mishap

Quick fire – industry news briefs

Get access to breaking mining news, now.