Canning Vale opens doors to a new era

Keller Australia and Austral Construction have joined forces to open their first shared workshop, yard and office in Canning Vale, Western Australia. Connections finds out how the move creates new opportunities for both business units – and how they overcame the challenges of transporting their equipment over 5,000km.

Although Austral Construction has a history of working on projects across the country, the last few years have seen a concentration of clients in the state of Western Australia (WA). So in 2023, the business unit began the process of looking to relocate its east coast offices and workshop in Melbourne to the west, several thousand kilometres away.

“We started searching for the right facility, found a couple of options that fell through and then earlier this year came across Canning Vale, outside Perth,” explains Shane Ashford, Austral’s National Plant Manager. “It was an old workshop earmarked for redevelopment but it was ideal for us.”

The move, which sees Austral retain an office on the east coast, also created an opportunity for sister company Keller Australia, which since 2009 had run a small satellite workshop in WA.

“We thought, why not join forces and have better shared facilities for all?” says Jeramiah Osborne, Shane’s counterpart at Keller. “We believed it would give us greater scope and be more sustainable through the annual ebbs and flows of both businesses.”

Roadmap for the future

Shane and Jeramiah, who already knew each other well and had worked together in the past, started to put together the detailed structure and roadmap for how everything would function in practice. “Obviously there are some differences between the ways the two companies work,” says Jeramiah. “So we’ve adopted the systems from each that we believed work best. For example we have a single maintenance system and we share certain costs, while a tradesperson’s time is charged to the individual BU.”

One of the big hurdles is how the facility prioritises requests from both businesses. “The team is tasked with managing both Austral and Keller work impartially, ensuring there’s no bias or prejudice stemming from their originating business,” he adds. “Through effective time management, strategic planning, clear communication and continuous progress evaluation, we aim to ensure a balanced focus on the needs of both entities, fostering collaboration and shared success across the board.”

Managing the project

As well as determining how Canning Vale would actually work, there was also the not-so-small matter of renovating a facility that had lain derelict for four years, moving hundreds of tonnes of equipment across Australia and then working out where everything would go when it arrived.

“We wanted to do this properly, so we executed it as a project model with a budget and schedule,” says Shane. “We asked one of our project managers, Josh Male, who was a little quiet at the time, to help us out.”

Although more used to managing complex marine construction projects in remote locations for Austral, Josh wasn’t fazed about taking on the challenge of ensuring Canning Vale got up and running successfully.

“There was a fair bit of design work to make sure everything was right, and I liaised with various trades as it’s the sort of project that can get away from you if you don’t manage it properly,” he says.

Moving day

Moving equipment thousands of kilometres from Austral’s Melbourne site to Canning Vale required careful planning. Fuel levies and high transportation costs since the pandemic meant the team had to find the most cost-effective option – first exploring shipping, then putting out a tender to several trucking companies.

Eventually, all the plant and other equipment was sorted and packed up over three months, before being driven across three states in 80 trucks, each carrying around 20 tonnes. It was a little easier on the Keller front, with its equipment moved from around 50km away.

The challenge then was how to organise everything. “It costs a lot of money and personnel hours to pick things up and move them, so a lot of planning went into how we set up the workshop and yard,” says Josh. “For example, Austral tend to mobilise to a project every six to nine months, whereas Keller mobilises to a project every two to six weeks – so that dictated to an extent where things go.”

Starting with a blank slate also allowed the team to implement a high level of 5S, the widely used system of efficient workplace organisation. “There was a race between us to see who could 5S the most!” jokes Jeramiah.

A light-hearted comment maybe, but it also sheds light on one of the advantages of the shared space, as Jeramiah points out: “This move opens up operational synergies and will drive best practice behaviour. For a start, you’re always on show to your sister company, so there’s a level of pride there. But we’ll also learn from each other’s processes. Austral, for example, with their jobs in the mining industry, are incredibly process driven, which I’m sure Keller can benefit from.”

Unlimited potential

The facility officially opened in October and will eventually have a permanent crew of 9, overseen by a joint workshop manager. Shane says that Canning Vale will provide more consistent work and allow the team to upskill as they service a wider variety of equipment.

“This move is exciting,” adds Jeramiah. “For Keller, we’ve never had the operational size in the west to warrant such a good, large space, but now we have the best in Australia. I believe this will breathe new life into a cyclical business and hopefully open up new collaborations between the two BUs – it now feels like it’s us against the competition rather than a standalone battle.”

Shane agrees: “Now we’re open, the hard work starts. There will no doubt be hurdles, but we’re anticipating good things. We have high-performing people and once we get going and find our rhythm, the potential is unlimited.”