Welcome back to the first edition of On the Wire for 2024. I can’t believe we are already three months into the year. I hope everyone has come back refreshed and and ready to take on the challenges for the year ahead!
Over the past period, we have really gained some good progress and momentum across numerous sites, as Iain mentions below. We are on the cusp of starting to ramp up on our significant projects. Tendering activity has remained high, with several tenders submitted pre and post-Christmas, and there are some promising signs for prospects and involvement in them.
Our project in Mongolia continued to work through the holiday period, through temperatures lower than -30 degrees Celsius. The works are progressing well as we reach 80% completion of the project. Thank you to the team for your hard work; we all know that the last 20% of a project is the hardest, so please make sure we look after each other and finish the project well. In February, we celebrated the Lunar New Year, which you can read about here.
Most importantly, from a people perspective, we have had our vacation engineers, Kyle Joiner and Kate Miller, finish their three-month work experience stints and have really enjoyed their time working across our sites. They are both keen to stay involved with Monadelphous and we look forward to them continuing their development.
In addition to the vacation students, our graduates commenced in the past month, so please welcome them to the team if you see them out on site - Jack Green, Kaveen Lekamalage, Riley McKenna.
Lastly, I’d like to welcome our latest round of apprentices – Georgie Sykes, Haiqal Halid, Luke McNamara, Raymond Wilkie, Sophia Wiles-Day and Tom Murphy. We’re looking forward to being part of your journey and joining the Monos’ team.
Damien Johnson
Welcome everyone to this month’s edition of On the Wire. This is the first operation update for 2024, and it is good to see everyone return safely from their festive season. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the people at Kathleen Valley and in Mongolia who kept the cogs turning during this period, which allowed so many others to enjoy a break.
Now that we are back into the swing of things, the start of stronger campaigns has successfully been rolled out, ensuring a smooth transition back to work after the festive season to keep everyone focused. Let’s maintain this focus throughout the year.
Onto the project front, Kathleen Valley has hit its peak workforce, and they have a very busy few months ahead of them to achieve the milestone dates in what I would describe as “a very congested work environment”. As long as they continue to manage the interface and the safe installation, the progress will continue to follow them.
The TUL project located at Port Headland’s Anderson Point for Fortescue is in the second phase of the project, which is the construction of a new sample station. Whilst undertaking this work, Fortescue has identified some additional shutdown scopes they would like the team to perform, so the crew there will grow a little more to assist with this scope.
The Car Dumper 3 (CD3) team continue to maintain its crew size, working on everything else except the CD3 scope. As the CD3 scope got postponed, BHP has awarded the CD3 team multiple other scopes, which have seen the team working on stackers/reclaimers, PDP1, site shutdowns, and even relocating out to Mining Area C (MAC) to assist with a request from BHP. With all the changes in scope and location, the most important part is they have taken their safety culture with them and delivered for BHP.
Over to Christmas Creek now, and they are at peak with a busy couple of months ahead of them. They are now well and truly into the Construction Verification stage whilst also finishing off the installation scope and will soon experience the transition into Stages 2 and 3 commissioning.
Down to Bunbury, the E&I team has had a slow start on the Kemerton Lithium Project, with selective scopes now being identified for the calendar year 2024. It will be a longer ramp up in the execution, but that does give the team opportune time to be well prepared for the chaos that will eventuate at some point in time.
From Bunbury, we cruise across the highway to Greenbushes, where the E&I team are starting to mobilise for the Chemical Grade Plant 3 (CGP3) project. The transition from the office to site has begun, so with all the prep work done, it will be good to see it executed in the field.
Over to Gladstone, where the team continues to tick along, successfully delivering for their regular customers. There are a couple of larger-than-normal opportunities in the pipeline over there, which will hopefully come to fruition over the coming months.
Back to home base in Perth, where we recently welcomed our new intake of Electrical Engineers and Electrical Apprentices who are undertaking their inductions and onboarding requirements. All of them are very keen to get to the site to begin their journey with Monadelphous. A big welcome to them all and I look forward to seeing you progress over the years to come.
That’s all for this month, stay safe.
Iain Hannant