Thirty five projects waiting for a site team.
Our tracker holds 171 solar, wind, battery and pumped hydro projects in Australia that have passed financial close and are not yet running. 108 are under construction and 28 are commissioning. The other 35 are committed but have not started building.
Those 35 are the ones this piece is about. 20 are batteries and 15 are solar farms. 12 are in New South Wales, 10 in Queensland, 9 in South Australia and 4 in Victoria. Every one of them now needs a project manager, a construction manager, site supervisors, a safety lead and a design and engineering interface on the owner side, and most of them want those people on site within months, not quarters.
The calendar works against a November start.
A project that reaches close in October or November and plans to mobilise straight away runs into three things at once.
The Christmas break. Most contractors, suppliers and consultancies close for some or all of the period between Christmas and the second week of January. Site establishment can start in December, but the people who approve, inspect and supply it are often away.
The holiday hangover. January is a slow month to hire. Candidates who resign in December usually want to start after the holidays, and offers made in the last fortnight of the year are often not accepted until the new year.
The northern wet season. The Bureau of Meteorology treats October to April as the wet season across northern Australia. For projects in the north of Queensland and beyond, earthworks and access roads become harder, and some programs simply plan around the rain.
Why the people constraint shows up first.
The 108 projects already under construction are not releasing their site teams. Construction managers, superintendents and commissioning leads on live jobs are being held to finish, and the 28 projects in commissioning are pulling hard on the scarcest people in the set.
That leaves new projects competing for a small pool of experienced site leaders in the one part of the year when people least want to move. In our experience a construction manager who resigns in late November is usually not available until mid to late January, once notice and leave are counted. A project that expected that person in December has lost six weeks before the first pile goes in.
The roles that slip first.
- Construction manager and site manager. Usually the critical hire. Without them, site establishment does not start in any useful way.
- HSE lead. Required before mobilisation on almost every site, and in demand across every sector at once.
- Owner's representative. The person who holds the contractor to the program. Often hired last, and missed most once work begins.
- Grid and connection interface. For batteries in particular, the person who manages the network provider's requirements needs to be in place well before energisation.
None of these roles are new. What changes at the end of the year is the time it takes to fill them.
What we would do this month.
If your project reaches close before Christmas, make the key site offers in November, not December. Candidates can then resign, work their notice and take their leave in one run, and start in early January rather than early February.
Agree start dates around the shutdown on purpose. A construction manager who starts on 12 January with a clear mobilisation plan is worth more than one who starts on 15 December and spends three weeks waiting for the supply chain.
Use contract people to bridge. A contract site manager or safety lead for the first three months lets permanent hires finish their notice without delaying the site.
For northern projects, plan the wet season into both the program and the hiring plan, and look across Australia and New Zealand for people with tropical construction experience.
The money arrives on the day of financial close. Make sure the people are not still arriving in February.