Networking with major project owners and other suppliers has the potential to unlock millions of dollars for Australian small and medium businesses (SMEs), with one company winning a multimillion-dollar contract with Snowy 2.0 following an ICN event in regional NSW.
Resources NSW, a bulk material solutions and transport logistics company, has secured the contract to move 130,000 units of 7-tonne concrete segments that will line the 27 km Snowy Hydro tunnel.
Using B-triple trucks, the company is hauling the precast units from a purpose-built factory in Cooma, to the remote Snowy 2.0 site in the Kosciuszko National Park.
Managing Director Brett Allen says the company became aware of the opportunity through attending an ICN event that focussed on both the Snowy 2.0 and Inland Rail projects.
“My business development manager went to an ICN business development seminar and took note of the Snowy Hydro,” he said.
“We supply a lot of quarry materials and do a lot of environmental movements, whether it’s fill out of sites or excavation sites, property development, tunnels, major infrastructure. So we’ve got quite large fleets of trucks running around,” he said.
“At the time, I was looking for some government contracts to add to what we do.”
The Snowy 2.0 project fit the bill.
Brett explained that Resources NSW was initially looking at the bulk spoil management contract for the Snowy 2.0 project, but a visit to the site led them to move sideways into the concrete hauling.
In late 2020, Brett and a Resources NSW management team went on a field trip run by the Future Generation Joint Venture to learn more about the project and the site. This was the start of a dialogue between the Illawarra based company and the Snowy 2.0 planning, engineering and development team.
When Future Generation decided to keep the bulk spoil management with the engineers that were already loading, manoeuvring and placing the fill, they approached Resources NSW to move the pre-cast concrete to the site.
“They were struggling to get a specialised team of management and workers during the Covid period so we proposed sending an experienced team to cover the whole package,” Brett said. They started with some short term projects to iron out any bugs, then moved into the project-length contract, which will go through to late 2027.
In order to fulfill the contract, Resources NSW has permanently relocated two project supervisors to Cooma and can scale from about 20 to 30 fly-in, fly-out employees at a time, pending the work needed.
The workload needs to match the tunnel borers, as the concrete is fed through the borers to line the tunnel.
“If we stop, the tunnel borers stop,” Brett said, adding that the vast majority of the work needed is in the logistics of moving the right amount of load to keep the project running.
The work also requires highly skilled drivers to navigate windy, and at times unsealed, roads in the National Park, which means Resources NSW has had to manage an onerous and recruitment and induction process.
“We have to find drivers that have got strong experience in this style of driving. They’re not just working on the highways and the asphalt.”
“Then when they first get there, we put them through some fairly rigorous training, including truck computer model and modelling simulations. They actually attend TAFE down there for a short period of time to bring all their skills up to speed with what the job requires.”
Brett says that without ICN, Resources NSW may not have known about the various work packages offered on the Snowy 2.0 project. And this project has led to other general freight work with Snowy 2.0.
“That’s our ICN adventure. A project original found on ICN and now we’ve mobilised an entire workforce down there.
Find out more about Resources NSW.
Visit the Snowy 2.0 Gateway page.