1. An AIP Plan is sometimes the only document the supply chain has available to understand the project, therefore it’s important to clearly communicate the local industry engagement standards and commitments for the project.

2. When structured correctly, the AIP Planning process can be a valuable point of collaboration in bringing functions together.

3. Working to unpack the supply chain requirements can uncover valuable opportunities for domestic industry that may have previously not been considered.

4. Identifying key steel packages and industries can serve to “turn-on” the economic dial and help major projects meet Government requirements (in this case NSW Government Hydro Project standards).

5. Early supply chain engagement, review of risks and opportunities, and

6. Commitment to capability development, can assist with maximising “deliverability” requirements.

When considering the challenges in any AIP Plan development, one that the HEA team continually encounter is that, as a publicly accessible document, the AIP Plan needs to be an informative document. Often the AIP Plan is the only public document available from which Australian industry can make assessments of the project’s intent regarding local content and subsequently their commitment to local content. The risks for any project in developing their Plan is that a bare minimum AIP Plan approach generally signals a bare minimum local content approach, sending a negative message to potential main contractors, supply chain and stakeholders regarding local content intent.

Developing the AIP Plan specifically for the OMPS project also raised some project specific challenges; several of which arose when unbundling the works packages and looking for opportunities for Australian industry. One challenge identified early was around the introduction of the industry targets for volumes of steel on Hydro Projects as required from the NSW Government with HEA providing the

OMPS team with guidance around the risks and opportunities in engaging the Australian steel industry to meet these targets. Drawing on our recent experience with another major project in NSW, the HEA team were able to provide OMPS with a framework for engaging the industry and provide them with appropriate contacts within the steel industry with whom they could collaborate with to test the local market.

With only a small number of similar projects in Australia, developing an AIP Plan for the OMPS project was also made difficult by the fact hat the only relevant case studies available for reference and evaluation were almost exclusively offshore projects. Therefore, unbundling work packages and identifying opportunities for Australian industry was more difficult than it is for projects where there is an established supply chain. However, this unique situation also provided opportunity for OMPS to set the benchmark with their early local industry engagement and provide a standard that can assumed “best practice” for future similar scoped works.

To that end, the OMPS team were very keen on ensuring compliance with all current industry guidelines and requirements, establishing a Plan that substantiated their approval commitments, fostered collaboration, drew different perspectives together and that would signal to ECI tenderers the importance of their AIP Plan commitments and expectations.

For any ecosystem to flourish there needs to be open and transparent communication, a consistent improvement of practices and approaches and a system framework within which to work.

As previously touched on, the first step in collaborating was the establishment of HEA’s Basecamp project management system. Basecamp works because it provides a simple and easily accessible place for everyone, in every role, to store, work on, discuss, decide and deliver the stuff that makes up every project. All project information, tasks, events, documents and communication are intuitively stored and organised in one centralised place where everyone can work together, rather than on separate platforms scattered in various places.

To compliment the Basecamp system, a private SharePoint cloud server for OMPS and HEA teams to access was also established to make sharing of early research and documentation and revisions of Plans and associated documents easier.

AIP Plans themselves exist within their own ecosystem, which is hosted by the Federal Government. Improving standards of AIP Plan development and submission is a crucial element in any local content strategy and in recognising this, the Government has recently improved their standards and platform for submission. Knowledge of this system is vital to the development, submission and approval of any AIP Plan, and the HEA team have committed significant time to learning these standards and system requirements.

With 15 years’ experience in local industry engagement, the HEA team understand that early engagement in important discussions and early definition of obligations and expectations is essential in ensuring successful development of AIP Plans. The cornerstone of any successful Plan development is collaboration and to that end, the HEA team adopted a collaborative delivery framework from the start of our engagement.

The first step in collaborating was the establishment of shared systems and executing the first of several team workshops. The workshops were vital for fostering collaboration and for sharing ideas, identifying risks and opportunities and providing a forum where all team members could have a voice. The workshops were also a great way to ensure the project kept to delivery timeframes and for individual and team responsibilities and commitments to be assigned in an environment based on open communication and support.

The AIP Plan development workshop process also enabled HEA to work with the OMPS team to uncover additional opportunities for Australian industry that hadn’t previously been identified. One such opportunity, was for Australian suppliers to provide some elements of the OEM pump-turbine. When the OMPS team had previously undertaken a detailed Contestability Analysis of all the procurement packages, the only package deemed not available for domestic supply was the OEM pump-turbine equipment package.

However, in guiding the OMPS team through the AIP Plan process, HEA were able to unbundle the requirements of the OEM pump turbine package to identify opportunities for Australian suppliers to supply some of the individual elements required, therefore creating more opportunity for local industry. As a result of this, the OMPS team were then able to test the local market where feasible through contracted requirements.

While the AIP Plan development process didn’t require any specific collaborations with industry groups, the new NSW Government requirements did see OMPS collaborate with the Australian Steel Industry to better understand their requirements and how they could meet required targets.