Industry News, Latest News

Australian Constructors Association releases industry charter

The Australian Constructors Association (ACA) has launched an Australian Construction Industry Charter for industry reform and to ensure stimulus projects are delivered efficiently.

The Charter is hoped to spear-head reform in areas such as worker health and well-being, diversity, capability and skills and environmental impact.

Ten commitments are listed on the Charter and these have been embraced by some of Australia’s infrastructure contracting companies. The points are:

  • Improve outcomes for all project stakeholders
  • Maximising the social and economic benefits of construction
  • Improve industry diversity
  • Improve health and wellbeing of the workforce
  • Build capability, capacity and skills
  • Build social licence to operate
  • Reduce the impact on the environment
  • Strive to improved industrial relations
  • Encourage innovation and improve productivity
  • Collaborate with all stakeholders to ensure risk pricing is open transparent and appropriate.

 

ACA Chief Executive Officer Jon Davies said, recognising the reliance being placed on it by Government to lead the economy out of recession, our industry has stepped up to the plate.

“We need to be transparent and accountable to our clients while maximising the social and economic benefits of our sector which employs 10 per cent of the total workforce,” Davies says.

“In an industry first, we have clearly identified the key elements required to improve the poor sustainability of our sector and effectively deliver the pipeline of stimulus projects. We have also developed our own Charter to ensure we are able to achieve lasting positive change and set the industry up for future success.”

All ACA members, including Acconia, Laing O’Rourke, McConnell Dowell and more, have pledged to conduct their operations in a manner that adheres to the 10 commitments outlined in the Charter.

“Definitive targets to achieve these commitments will be set over the next few months with progress openly and transparently monitored and reported on a regular basis,” Davies said.

Alongside the Charter, a ‘Framework for a More Sustainable Construction Industry’ has been developed. This sets out the ACA’s recommended areas of focus for reform.

The Framework identifies three key pillars for a sustainable construction industry:

  1.  Positive industry culture
  2. Equitable and aligned commercial frameworks
  3. Sufficient capability, capacity and skills.

“We see these pillars as being intrinsically linked, with the ability to achieve improved outcomes for any of these pillars reliant on improvements in the other two. For example, it is widely understood that adversarial commercial frameworks negatively impact on the culture of the industry and industry culture is a key factor in attracting people into the industry.”

“With the additional investment in new infrastructure outlined in the Federal Budget being conditional on ‘using it or losing it’ there is a real opportunity for industry and governments to adopt a more collaborative approach to project procurement and delivery to address the lack of truly ‘shovel ready’ projects across Australia,” Davies said.

We know many people are working remotely, for a free home subscription to Roads & Infrastructure click here. 


Related stories:

Send this to a friend