Big future for fixers
Engineers help keep manufacturers ticking
BOUTIQUE engineering firm Workplace Alliance is straddling the old and the new when it comes to manufacturing in Geelong.
Most of the growing five-year-old company’s business is in running maintenance and training projects for major established manufacturers, but it’s also had a hand in installing bespoke equipment in advanced manufacturing and research facilities.
Founder and managing director Wayne Allan said being agile and adapting to individual needs was crucial for engineering companies amid a changing manufacturing landscape.
“I’ve taken all the learning of what has failed, and created an engineering company that’s nimble,” Mr Allan said.
He said the future of contract maintenance and engineering was in adapting to needs, whether that be working on a single project, problem solving or embedding staff into an organisation.
“It’s going in and fixing a problem, and getting out and being seen as a resource and not a cost,” Mr Allan said.
“Once you are seen as a resource and a think tank, then you add so much value to everyone’s process.”
Based in Newtown, Workplace Alliance has a full-time staff of 37, but during the Christmas manufacturing shutdown operations it had more than 100 people on the books.
Mr Allan has a long engineering history in Geelong: He completed his apprenticeship at Ford before stints at firms including Geelong Wool Combing and Kempe Engineering, where he was area manager, and a failed engineering company from which he was made redundant.
With the closure of Alcoa in 2014, Mr Allan said he had former colleagues coming to him looking for work.
“I was flying by the seat of my pants … but everything I had done previously had been relationship based,” he said.
One of those relationships was with Boral Cement at Waurn Ponds which led to a service agreement that gave the business a base from which to grow.
In addition to Boral and Godfrey Hirst, Workplace Alliance picked up clients such as AKD Softwoods in Colac, and other large manufacturers in Melbourne.
There is also planned work at PepsiCo Australia, and later this year Workplace Alliance will relocate its decommissioned Laverton manufacturing equipment back to the US.
While the established manufacturers provide about 75 per cent of business, Workplace Alliance has worked with Deakin-based interests on world-leading projects in the fibre and frontier materials precincts. That, too, has taken Mr Allan overseas — to Switzerland for his work with HeiQ, which has a research and development set-up at Deakin, and to Germany to inspect a unique 3D roll form machine now installed at the Waurn Ponds campus.
Driven by a philosophy “to leave it better than how you found it”, Mr Allan would like to see the business evolve into more involvement in advanced manufacturing in which he sees exciting potential for Geelong, particularly if it involves more sustainable energy production.
He said in today’s global competitive market, Australian manufacturers needed to be constantly learning and improving.
“That’s the future of manufacturing in Australia: looking at what hasn’t worked, looking at what other people are doing, and doing it better and smarter,” he said.
Mr Allan said the process of improvement often involved fresh eyes and a conversation, just to get people thinking.