International engineering contractor Bechtel is seeking to diversify its local business by securing work on sustaining capital projects in the mining sector.
Bechtel’s mines and metals president Shaun Kenny said the group did not anticipate a re-run of the big growth projects of the past decade, but was targeting other opportunities in Western Australia.
“What I can see coming up is a lot of sustaining capital work on the projects that have been built,” Mr Kenny told Business News after an address to the AMMA conference.
“There is still a good solid business in the sustaining capital work and we are very interested to get involved in that.
“We are in that process of looking at the work environment here to understand it better.”
To support its new focus, Bechtel has transferred its Asia Pacific mining and metals business development manager, Douglas Mackay, to Perth.
Mr Mackay’s past experience includes working as an engineering group supervisor on the Worsley Alumina efficiency and growth project in 2009.
Bechtel will not be alone in chasing sustaining capital works, which involve regular small upgrade projects and maintenance work to maintain the efficiency of process plants and mining operations.
Other contractors in the local market are targeting the same opportunity.
Bechtel has traditionally focused on the big growth projects.
Its oil and gas business unit is the lead engineering contractor on Chevron’s Wheatstone LNG project, which will have a peak workforce of more than 5,000 people.
Bechtel currently has about 600 engineering and office staff working on the Wheatstone site and in its Perth project office, and will recruit a large team of manual workers when it commences the structural mechanical and piping contract on the LNG plant.
It is also the lead contractor on three LNG projects under construction at Gladstone in Queensland, where about 9,500 Bechtel employees are currently working.
Its mining and metals business unit has in recent years been focused on coal projects in Queensland for the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, where it has mobilised 25,000 workers.
In WA, the mining and metals business unit worked on some of the early iron ore expansion projects in the 1970s, for Robe River Iron (now part of Rio Tinto) and Mt Newman Mining (now BHP Billiton).
It also worked on the Laporte titanium dioxide plant at Australind (now Cristal Global).
More recently, it has been the lead engineering contractor on two expansion projects at BHP Billiton’s Worsley Alumina plant.
