John Holland Annual Review, 2011 - Leighton Holdings

The $650-million Northern Sewerage Project tunnelled under almost 2,500 properties and excavated over 370,000 tonnes of Melbourne’s
basalt, rock and spoil. John Holland’s Michael Cocksedge, Senior Engineer and Melbourne Water’s Peter Henwood, Clerk of Works
Services and Energy & Resources business streams will also
continue to present new opportunities for Communications.
Continued growth in the rail market is also a key driver of new
business, with opportunities emerging in both the public and the
private sector. It has been pleasing to work closely with our
Rail Australia business to deliver the Middlemount Coal Rail Loop—
the first piece of new rail infrastructure to be delivered by the private
sector in Queensland in many years—along with the South West
Rail Link project in New South Wales, the Perth City Link in Western
Australia and the South Morang Rail Extension project in Victoria.
The Queensland and Western Australian rail markets will present
a number of new opportunities for our business, particularly as
growth in the resources sector continues to create demand for
new rail infrastructure.
Looking forward to 2015, we continue to see significant growth
opportunities across the business stream, particularly as new
opportunities arise with our colleagues in Energy & Resources
and Transport Services. Organically, the opportunities ahead
support our long-term targets; however, this is tempered by the
constraints of a tight labour market. To address this issue we
continue to see the development of our diversity strategy—in
terms of ethnicity, gender and age—which will enable us to better
meet these resourcing constraints. We also remain committed
to nurturing the great depth of young talent within the business,
and over the coming year our focus will be on developing these
individuals to create a strong pipeline of new leaders.
A continued focus on excellence in project delivery at an operational
level also remains a priority. In terms of risk management, a focus
on our tender and project delivery processes and our overall
governance structure for major projects is designed to enhance
our performance in this area. In addition, investment in new training
and development programs, particularly for our frontline leaders,
will go a long way toward ensuring that our business fundamentals,
measured in terms of our effectiveness in project delivery, are
strong. Across the business there is recognition that the way
we support our frontline leaders—how we bring them into the
business, how we develop them and how we support them—
will have a significant impact on our broader success.
With $3.3 billion worth of work in hand, the Infrastructure stream
of businesses is positioned well to achieve a strong result in the
year ahead. Our ability to work closely with other parts of John
Holland will continue to be integral to our success and, in turn, the
broader success of John Holland will continue to be driven by our
traditional strength in building and civil construction. The inherent
diversity of skills within the business will continue to present new
opportunities, as we continue to seek improvement in the value
of our service offering to clients in Australia and abroad.
Chris Evans
Executive General Manager – Infrastructure
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