Local labour a priority for hospital build

Busselton Health Campus’ preferred contractor Doric has made a commitment to recruit locally when construction on the $120 million project starts.

Chief executive Peter Iancov told the Times it made business sense to maximise on local employment as the company would be engaged in the region for the next two years.

However, he said it would be hard to determine the number of workers to be employed on the project this early.

Mr Iancov said a community engagement plan would see a “bullseye approach” taken to employment.

“We will advertise in local papers for sub-contractors, firstly in Busselton, before opening up to the rest of the South West region,” he said.

Busselton Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Ray McMillan said he was keen to work with the contractor to ensure local employment was capitalised on.

“Construction has been reasonably buoyant throughout 2012 with the wastewater treatment plant and the new Woolworths store (and the health campus) will allow construction activity to remain strong,” he said.

Mr Iancov said Doric was also looking to engage and provide incentives for apprentices to work on the project.

“We work a lot with younger people as we are a fairly young company,” he said.

The Apprenticeship and Traineeship Company South West operations manager Warren Cluss welcomed the move as positive, with the past 12 months proving difficult in securing jobs for apprentices.

Mr Cluss said the health campus was the first major civil construction project in the region in a while, and apprentices could also benefit from learning new skills on the major project.

“They will be able to work on multi-storey installations, when they usually only work on single-storey dwellings, there are certainly some extra skills to pick up,” he said.

Doric, which was previously engaged to work on the Hedland Health Campus, has yet to sign off on final contracts.