A message from Lorna Rechichi

Welcome to the August edition of 'On the Hook'. It has been a very busy start to the financial year, with significant shut activity across Fortescue, a greater than expected volume of work at the Western Range shutdown and TUL with scopes significantly increasing. Our operations, planning and mobilisation teams have done a fantastic job in coordinating all these significant changes with limited warning to maximise opportunity for our business unit and to meet customer expectations.

We have also had some unexpected changes in scope, with customers applying the brakes on construction projects, the most significant of those being Albemarle at Kemerton. Our tendering, planning and operations teams are continually seeking to limit any impacts of these changes and redirect equipment and labour onto other work scopes.

Our Karratha Gap Ridge facility was officially opened with a ceremony on 22 August, an important milestone for the history books and important to pause and celebrate all of those involved in making this happen. This significant capital investment demonstrates ongoing commitment to invest in the growth of our operations in the Northwest and brings together Heavy Lift, Melchor, Group Assets and M&IS into one facility. The event was attended by the people who drove the facility development, our customers, local teams, and our senior leadership.

The Alevro JV team hit another significant milestone earlier this month with the jack down of the second compressor module. Congratulations to the team on the safe execution of this complex operation ahead of schedule. There is one more compressor module jack down to go and multiple modules still to be moved before the end of the year. The team have also safely and successfully moved their first module for Kent on the Ampol Future Fuels project over in Brisbane.

The successful award of Pluto 1 to Monadelphous will involve large module moves via SPMT and the use of our gantry crane to support projects works from next year and into 2026.

In relation to our new system, Dynamics, we are close to the completion of side-by-side testing of three projects in the Dynamics production environment. Final testing of the new timesheets within Dynamics is underway which will create significant efficiency savings for our supervisors in the field and our project admin team. When we are satisfied with the side-by-side testing of the first three projects, we will load the next batch of projects. Dynamics will enable the entire HL process from tender/quote through to claim to be processed within one system, standardising our approach, removing duplication and creating a more streamlined process - we are aiming for full implementation by December 2024.

We continue to investigate multiple electric replacement options for both cranes and transport in support of our and our customers' commitment to decarbonisation. Marlon Baars, Operations Manager, recently visited multiple suppliers in Europe to explore replacement options for pick and carry cranes. We continue to work closely with Tadano and Liebherr to identify opportunities to pilot hybrid options coming onto the market.

In this edition, Travis provides an update on our Franna alerts, an innovation identified by the HL team to keep our people safe, creating an early warning alert if a Franna is operated at close to rated capacity. This has been a significant effort led by Travis to work through and overcome several technology challenges to make this effective. Available now across the HL fleet of Frannas this will now be rolled out across the entire Monadelphous business.

We have seen a spike in incidents in July. In some cases, arising as we are not following some of our basic requirements. Historically, we have seen a strong link between increases in All Injury Frequency Rate (AIFR) and the triggering of recordable incidents. It is vitally important to retain focus on prevention of all incidents and I urge you all to engage in discussions about why these incidents are occurring and keep embedding all the measures that we have in place to keep each other safe.

Enjoy reading in more detail some of the above stories in the month’s newsletter.

Until next time, stay safe.