Indian touch to Calibre’s growth

Fast-growing engineering consultancy Calibre Projects has formed a business alliance with Engineers India Limited in an effort to underpin further rapid expansion of its activities – including a proposed North West fertiliser plant.

Calibre, which has kept a low profile during its three-year life, already has 350 staff, illustrating the extraordinary growth opportunities in Western Australia’s current resources boom.

Managing director Jack Rowley is not resting on his laurels, putting in place strategies he hopes will enable the company to double turnover in the next two years.

Uranium and petrochemicals are two sectors being targeted by Calibre, which to date has thrived on the back of the booming iron ore industry.

Many other engineering firms, such as Worleyparsons, Sinclair Knight Merz, Hatch and GRD Minproc, have also enjoyed rapid growth over the past two to three years.

Mr Rowley said Calibre and Delhi-based EIL were bidding jointly to build a fertiliser project on the Burrup Peninsula for Indian company Depak Fertilisers.

He is also holding discussions this week with WMC Resources about the proposed expansion of the giant Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, where Calibre hopes to leverage EIL’s experience with uranium projects.

In India, the two companies are bidding for an iron ore project and Mr Rowley said the main focus of the alliance was the complementary experience and technical skills of the two companies.

Calibre has also used EIL to help it cope with the shortage of skilled engineers and drafters in Australia.

However, Mr Rowley said this was a secondary factor in the alliance.

Another string to Calibre’s growth bow is its relationship with Indonesian company Petrosea, majority owned by Perth-based Clough.

Under this deal, Calibre will send packages of work to Petrosea’s Jakarta office.

This arrangement will add to an already strong trend among Australian engineering firms working with lower-wage countries and Mr Rowley insisted work quality would not suffer.

“Those groups are up there with the best in the world in terms of engineering and drafting skills,” he said.

Calibre was established in 2002 by Mr Rowley and his co-directors Ray Munroe and Dave Walker.

They had substantial prior experience in project and construction management services, working for big firms like Sinclair Knight Merz and Fluor, and teamed up when they decided to target the resource companies directly.

Mr Rowley said the timing of the move “was great for us”.

“We caught the bandwagon just at the right time with the boom in the iron ore industry in the Pilbara,” he said.

Calibre’s first project was Rio Tinto’s eastern range mine development and Mr Rowley said the success of that project was a big factor in Calibre’s subsequent growth.

The company has been awarded engineering, procurement and construction management contracts on Rio’s Yandi mine expansion, its West Angelas ‘de-bottlenecking’ project and its Pilbara rail duplication project.

It has also formed a joint venture with Perth firm Engenium to provide rail-engineering services and Mr Rowley said the company was now looking to diversify its operations.

“Our strategy was to build a platform on what we were good at in iron ore and then diversify our client base and our operations,” he said.

Calibre has won work with Wesfarmers’ subsidiary CSBP and is doing “entry level work” for Woodside, BHP Billiton Petroleum and Santos.

It is also studying future expansion options for Rio Tinto’s iron ore business and its Argyle Diamonds subsidiary, which is assessing an underground expansion.

Mr Rowley believes Calibre’s ability to win work against long-established competitors reflects the quality of its people and its business systems.

In the latter area, it worked with SAI Global to adopt the ‘Australian Business Excellence Framework’.

“The clients are looking at the quality of the service and are less interested in the badge people are wearing.”

Calibre’s growth has not been entirely without hiccups.

Sub-contractors working on iron ore expansion projects managed by Calibre have contacted WA Business News in recent months complaining about slow payments for their work.

Mr Rowley said there had been some administrative hitches but did not believe there were any substantive problems.