Labour Hire with Andrew Selwood

/ Why PJL?Labour Hire Case Study

PJL's ready workforce of qualified tradesmen have long been in demand in the mining industry, and are now highly regarded in the tunnelling construction industry after showing their expertise on major tunnel projects in Sydney.

PJL’s Sydney Metro Manager Andrew Selwood, says the company’s background in providing labour hire for mine sites has proven a natural advantage in the construction industry.

“Working on the civil tunnels, Sydney Metro and NorthConnex, we’re offering specialised mechanical tradesmen, labourers, boilermakers, the odd operator and a few crane operators who all have a background predominantly in mining or construction,” Andrew said.

“What we found when we became involved in these projects is that they were essentially mining in the tunnels under Sydney, so all the principles are the same. These skills are what we’ve learnt in mining sites across Australia, so we’ve brought our guys down here and all the clients really appreciate that most of our tradesmen have been underground before, and they took to it really well.”

Among the tradesman PJL have been able to source for these projects include Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) fitters that are often hard to come by, heavy crane operators through to trade assistants.

“Even when we do supply those base level operator trade assistants, they have high risk work licences which include EWP, forklift, working at heights, sometimes Rigger and Dogger,” Andrew said.

“Their skills are often above what our competitors offer. That’s our niche market, having properly trained workers with a proven work history within our company deployed down here. It paints a really good picture of our adaptability to this new industry – because we haven’t really done tunnelling in construction before now.”

Andrew says it’s rewarding to respond quickly with top level tradesmen that often deliver beyond client expectations.

“We had a client call up and request three mechanics at short notice for a job, but I could only supply him with one. The client ended up calling me back a week later and said ‘that one guy did the job of what I thought it would have taken three guys to do, you saved us there.”

It’s clear the PJL labour hire philosophy, which has served the mining industry so well, is also gaining respect in the construction industry.

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