CCF WA NEWS

Successful Recycling of C&D Materials

With David Beyer, Principal of ActiveSustainability.

Your business could be saving money, and helping to ensure a sustainable future, by using quality recycled Construction & Demolition (C&D) materials.

With over 1.5 million tonnes of C&D materials processed annually in WA, there is a large supply of recycled construction materials available.

This timely and informative webinar is presented by David Beyer, co-author of the recently released WA Construction Resources - Recovered Construction and Demolition Materials Resource Guide.

The Guide features information on what, where and how much construction waste is available for reuse in WA projects.

Mr Beyer will summarise the key points from the Guide. You’ll learn where to source recycled C&D materials, and how to put them to best use.

WHEN:

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15th 2020

11:00am - 12:00pm

REGISTER:

(Registrations now closed)

Cbus Super, Australia’s leading Industry Super Fund for the building and construction industry, has a proud history of investing back into the industry and creating jobs for its members through Cbus Property^#.

Now, more than ever, Cbus’ commitment to investing in Australian projects and developments will be vital as Australia continues on its road to economic recovery.

Since March 2020, Cbus has committed over $950 million to Australian businesses through equity raising, debt finance and project financing. An extra allocation to the Cbus debt portfolio means Cbus now has a further $850 million in additional capital to invest in companies and project finance.

The fund has committed over $240 million in general corporate debt to Australian businesses and a further commitment of $260 million into debt funding for construction projects across Sydney and Melbourne including:

• funding of $160 million for the development of over 390 new apartments and associated retail and commercial facilities over two locations in South Melbourne and the inner North East of Melbourne;
• $100 million in a NSW based construction facility for a residential project close to the Sydney CBD.

In addition, Cbus has also injected over $450 million into quality Australian companies that were raising capital to continue operating and employing into the recovery.

More projects and investments ahead

Over the next 12 months, Cbus will continue to actively look for opportunities that create strong returns and jobs for its members, playing an important role in Australia’s economic recovery and supporting our members’ financial wellbeing during their working lives and into retirement.

Learn more about Cbus’ role in the road to recovery here.

This update was brought to you by Cbus, the industry super fund for building, construction and allied industries. 

^# Cbus Property Pty Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Super Pty Ltd and has responsibility for the development and management of Cbus’ direct property investments.

This information is about Cbus and doesn’t take into account your specific needs. You should look at your own financial position, objectives and requirements before making any financial decisions. Read the relevant Cbus Product Disclosure Statement to decide if Cbus is right for you. Call 1300 361 784 or visit cbussuper.com.au for a copy.

Cbus' Trustee: United Super Pty Ltd ABN 46 006 261 623 ASFL 233792 Cbus ABN 75 493 363 262

Australia’s peak voice for the civil infrastructure sector, the Civil Contractors Federation, has welcomed the Federal Government’s infrastructure investment package announced in the 2020-2021 Federal Budget and has called on governments to work with industry to roll out the funds in a fast and effective manner.

“CCF welcomes the $7.5 billion worth of new infrastructure investment, taking the total Federal Government commitment to $14 billion since the outbreak of COVID-19. This is in addition to the existing $100 billion rolling 10-year infrastructure investment pipeline,” CCF National Chief Executive Officer Chris Melham said.

“I would like to thank the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Michael McCormack MP and the Minister for Population Cities and Urban Infrastructure, the Hon Alan Tudge MP, for their constructive dialogue with CCF over many months leading up to the Budget and acknowledge their recognition of the important role the civil infrastructure sector can play in contributing to Australia’s economic recovery as evidenced in tonight’s budget.

“This investment reflects the significant productive capacity of the civil infrastructure sector, and its readiness to generate additional jobs as outlined in the CCF’s 2020-2021 Federal Government pre-budget submission. CCF has long argued for significant and sustained civil infrastructure investment to support Australia’s economic recovery efforts and the budget announcements reflect CCF’s policy."

Mr Melham also welcomed the Federal Governments ‘use it or lose it’ message to the States and Territories but he said it needs to go further by requiring ‘shovel ready’ infrastructure funds to be spent in a transparent manner across urban, regional, rural, and remote Australia – and not to be used for ‘pork barreling’ in the lead up to respective State elections.

“In addition, Federal, State and Territory government procurement policy must be more balanced by encouraging and maximizing greater participation of Tier 2 and Tier 3 head contractors, and I look forward to the Federal Government adopting this policy and its application to the release of infrastructure funds to State and Territory procurement agencies,” he said.

“While the Government has made it quite clear that it is targeting ‘shovel-ready’ projects across all States and Territories, creating opportunities for parties to work more collaboratively is the key to contracts being awarded earlier and to identify and manage risks."

Civil Contractors Federation National - 2020-2021 Budget Brief 

1. Economic Highlights

• Budget deficit is $213.7 billion in 2020-2021
• Economy forecast to fall by 3.75 per cent in 2020
• Unemployment is forecast to peak at 8 per cent in the December 2020 quarter
• Establishment of a new JobMaker hiring credit - payable for up to twelve months and immediately available to employers who hire those on JobSeeker aged 16-35
• Expanded asset write off incentives and new loss carry back measures

 

2. Infrastructure Investment

The Federal Government has announced:

• an additional $7.5 billion for road and rail infrastructure projects in the 2020-2021 Budget (see Attachment A for a break down of new and additional funding commitments). The $7.5 billion investment includes new projects in each jurisdiction as well as additional funds for existing projects, and in most cases, requires matching funds from the respective State or Territory Government.
• an additional $2 billion investment in road safety measures as part of a new Road Safety Program.
• an additional $1 billion under the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program in addition to $500 million announced in June 2020.
• $2 billion in new funding to build water infrastructure including dams, weirs and pipelines.
• The Commonwealth’s investment in infrastructure since the outbreak of COVID 19 is approximately $14 billion.

3. Apprentices/trainees

The Federal Government has announced a $1.2 billion package in the 2020-2021 Budget to support the hiring of apprentices. The package is in addition to the previously announced $2.8 billion Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy to help employers to retain their apprentices and trainees. Under the package employers will be eligible for 50 per cent of the wages for a new or recommencing apprentice or trainee for the period up to 30 September 2021, up to $7,000 per quarter. The subsidy will be available to employers of any size or industry, Australia-wide who engage an Australian apprentice or trainee from 5 October 2020 until the 100,000 cap is reached.

Western Australia’s civil construction industry peak body welcomes today’s launch of the State Government’s Infrastructure Ready training program, which will offer a pathway into a civil construction career for hundreds of Western Australians.

Civil Contractors Federation WA CEO Andy Graham said the four-week program would provide the first step to an exciting and rewarding career in civil construction. “There’s a very strong pipeline of road and rail infrastructure projects to be delivered over the next few years in WA,” Mr Graham said. “It’s an exciting challenge for our industry, and it’s also a great opportunity for Western Australians who might not have previously considered a career in civil construction.

“Everyone is aware of the traditional trade-level jobs in housing and high-rise construction, but there are lots of ‘tradies’ in civil construction too, with a wide variety of interesting and well-paid trade-level roles in areas such as plant operations, pipelaying, road and bridge construction, tunnelling, and utilities installation.”

Mr Graham said the industry and the TAFEs had worked together to devise a program that quickly and effectively delivers ‘basic training’ in civil construction, providing the foundation skills for working safely on infrastructure projects. The program will include a work placement that will provide hands-on experience on a major project.

“The work placement will also be the first step to helping participants connect with potential employers,” Mr Graham said. “After all, that’s what this initiative is all about – finding jobs for Western Australians in the thriving civil construction sector.”

Mr Graham said the State Government, through the Office of Major Transport Infrastructure Delivery (OMTID), would encourage head contractors and subcontractors on its projects to provide employment to successful graduates from the program. “OMTID is to be congratulated for its proactive approach in both driving the creation of this program, and incentivising the employment of people in entry-level roles on its projects,” he said. “These new workers will be the future ‘top guns’ our industry needs to ensure a sustainable, home-grown workforce for years to come.”

Western Australia’s civil construction industry peak body congratulates the State Government on implementing key recommendations in the Fiocco report through the introduction of the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Bill 2020 into State Parliament.

Civil Contractors Federation WA CEO Andy Graham said the industry welcomed the removal of the exemption for some types of resources sector construction work. “This will remove a grey area in the current legislation which has caused confusion,” Mr Graham said. “As a matter of principle, we believe there’s no justification for excluding any particular type of construction work from legislation that simply helps ensure contractors get paid for the work they have done."

Mr Graham said the revision to payment times, with a maximum 20 business days payment for head contractors and 25 business days for subcontractors, achieved a fair and realistic balance, while the complementary introduction of a payment schedule regime was a welcome step forward to ensuring greater certainty and security of payment.

“The payment schedule process is well understood by our industry and regarded as fair to all parties,” he said.

Mr Graham said the introduction of trusts for retentions was a reasonable reform that would protect retentions in event of company failure. “It makes sense for retentions to be held in trust as they are a portion of the payment that the contractor has already earned at the time of their retention,” he said. “Education will be key to the successful implementation of retention trusts and we look forward to working with Government on ensuring industry is well prepared."

The new legislation reduces the time available to make an application for adjudication, and also restricts the grounds for adjudication to matters included in the payment schedule. “These are both sensible reforms which will give claimants greater and earlier certainty, and will also encourage a shift back to a faster, cheaper and less complicated adjudication process,” Mr Graham said.

The peak body for the Western Australian civil construction industry has asked for a small revision to the Government home building incentive eligibility criteria to avoid a ‘boom and bust’ in subdivision construction.

Civil Contractors Federation WA CEO Andy Graham said the combined $45,000 State Government Building Bonus and Federal Government Home Builder incentives had created a welcome boost for civil contractors in the subdivision construction sector but had also brought fears that a short burst of heightened activity would be followed by a prolonged downturn.

He said the current guidelines required that new home buyers must be the registered owner of their block of land before December 31 to qualify for the incentive payments.

“This means the construction window available for new stages of subdivisions to be built, completed and handed over is effectively from now to mid-November,” Mr Graham said.

“Civil contractors who build subdivisions, and their suppliers, are facing a hectic few months ahead, with land developers hoping to bring thousands of extra lots onto the market to meet the surge in demand created by the incentives.

“While being busy is certainly not the worst of problems, there are growing concerns that this short boom will be followed by a longer bust, which will put jobs at risk.”

Mr Graham said around 6500 Western Australians were directly employed in land development and site preparation services, along with thousands of others in businesses providing goods and services to the sector.

“To protect these livelihoods, we’re asking for the guidelines to be revised to allow subdivision development activity to be spread over a more reasonable timeframe,” he said.

CCF WA has asked for the scheme conditions to be modified so that home buyers taking advantage of the incentive would still have to sign up by December 31, but could be registered as owners of the land any time before June 30.

“Rather than the current requirement for home construction to have started by June 30, the rules could be changed so that construction of the lot has to be completed by that date,” Mr Graham said. “This wouldn’t compromise the scheme’s core aim of rapidly boosting residential construction but would help avoid a potentially damaging ‘bubble’ in subdivision construction.

“We’ll still see plenty of home builds getting underway in the meantime on existing blocks of land and new blocks as they come to market, but those extra few months will make all the difference for the subdivision construction sector.”

The State Government’s new Buy Local Policy, released today, is designed to change behaviours within Government and ensure procurement agencies achieve both the letter and intent of the policy.

The current Buy Local Policy got a poor review in 2017 from the State Auditor General, who wrote: “The full effect of the Policy is not achieved because agencies do not always consider the intent when applying specific aspects of it.” The State Government says that’s going to change. Launching the policy, Premier Mark McGowan said: “This is all about ensuring that local businesses are given every opportunity to carry out work for the State Government in their local area.”

The cornerstone of the Buy Local Policy is the Regional Price Preferences, which have stayed the same for construction contracts. The regional business preference, which is 5% of the tendered price up to a maximum of $250,000; and the regional content preference, also 5% of the tendered price up to a maximum of $250,000.

While those preference percentages and limits haven’t changed, agencies will now have the power to increase the maximum preference to $1 million “as a means of addressing social and economic government priorities”.

Generally, though the changes to the policy are more about giving it greater teeth and making it more likely to achieve effective outcomes.

The policy encourages agencies to consider regional businesses when forming procurement panels and says regional panel members based within the prescribed distance of the contract’s point of delivery must be invited to quote.

The policy also extends to managing contractors and others that procure on behalf of government, who will be “required to apply all appropriate requirements of the policy when seeking quotations or calling public tenders on behalf of the government agency”.

The State Government says it will offer training for regional contractors in understanding the policy and how to apply for contracts and will also provide then with 'look-ahead' lists of forthcoming tenders to allow local contractors more time to bid.

Agencies will sign up to new Implementation Agreements to underline their commitment. There will be increased reporting requirements to ensure the policy is being adhered to.

The new Buy Local Policy will be phased in over the next six months. During that time, The Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation is inviting industry feedback.

Click here to download the new policy

CCF WA's Civil Construction Industry Training Committee has put a proposal to the State Government that Certificate III Civil Construction traineeships be re-classified as Apprenticeships in Western Australia.

The committee believes the introduction of Civil Construction Apprenticeships is essential to improve community perceptions of careers in civil. For many young people – and their teachers and parents – civil construction is seen as an inferior option to a building or mechanical trade.

We know that’s not the case – civil is a challenging and rewarding field with a variety of interesting career pathways. But how do we change those perceptions and ensure our industry attracts its share of the best and brightest tradespeople? The best way to start – as other states have already done – is to give Civil Construction qualifications (Plant Operator, Pipelayer, Road Constructor, Trenchless Technician etc) their due recognition as Trades, by re-classifying the Certificate III qualifications as Apprenticeships.

Some of the key benefits are:

• Young Apprentices can be paid a junior wage under the Modern Award (currently, young trainees must be paid a full adult wage, making them a less attractive option for employers).
• The nominal duration of the qualifications will increase from 24 months to 36 months. This will assist contractors to achieve ‘in training’ targets set by clients. Note competency-based progression will still be available, allowing an employer to fast-track progression for early sign-off where qualifications are required in a shorted timeframe. Feedback from RTOs is that the increased duration will allow more flexibility in delivering site-based training, allowing them to deliver higher-quality training.
• Potentially, better funding support from Governments, which tend to regard Apprenticeships more highly  – as we saw a couple of years ago when the State Government cut payroll tax for traineeships and described it as ‘closing a loophole’.
• The qualifications would only be available through an Apprenticeship pathway, i.e. under a training contract with an employer. This will reinforce the status of Civil Construction skills as ‘proper’ trades.

 

For this proposal to be approved, we need to demonstrate to the State regulator that there is broad support from industry. That’s where our members and other industry stakeholders can help by providing a letter of support on your company letterhead.

The key point for the letter to make is that your company supports the re-classification of the Certificate III Civil Construction qualifications (Cert III Civil Construction, Cert III Civil Plant Operations and Cert III Trenchless Technology) to Class A Apprenticeships. You can also outline the key reasons you support this proposal. Click below for a document with some more background information to help. Contact ccfwa@ccfwa.com.au for more info.

Civil Apprenticeships - background info for letters of support.pdf

Western Australia’s civil construction industry peak body says new Federal and State Government stimulus payments will help support thousands of construction jobs in the subdivision development sector.

Civil Contractors Federation WA CEO Andy Graham said the Federal $25,000 incentive and the State $20,000 incentive were already encouraging more project home buyers back into the market.

“This boost is very timely for the WA industry,” Mr Graham said. “Recently we saw the official forecast for dwelling commencements in WA this financial year revised down from 15,500 to 12,500."

“That was disturbing news for civil contractors and suppliers who rely on residential subdivision activity and may have been facing an uncertain future as current projects came to an end."

“By stimulating residential construction activity, the incentive payments will help ensure a stronger pipeline of work for subdivision contractors and suppliers, and in turn help those businesses to continue to employ Western Australians.”

CCF WA’s campaign for more certainty for the civil construction and associated extractive industries in the wake of the Eclipse decision has led to a constructive response from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER). As we wrote in the recent CCF WA Bulletin Q1 2020, regulatory amendments since Eclipse had effectively addressed concerns that sand transferred from one site to another for land development could attract the waste levy (landfill levy). However, significant uncertainty remained where sand and other basic raw materials were offered for sale, and had led to the perverse outcome where long-term suppliers of high-quality construction materials were now being required to undertake regular and expensive testing to prove their product wasn't contaminated.

In response to CCF WA’s concerns, DWER has provided additional information supplementing the  information provided in its factsheets: Assessing whether material is waste and Amendments to the Environmental Protection Regulations 1987 – clean fill and uncontaminated fill.

DWER has advised:

The 2018 landfill category amendments are only relevant to material that is defined as waste under the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (EP Act) and Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Act 2007.

• The amendments do not apply to material that is not waste, such as basic raw materials extracted from quarries (as part of extractive industries’ operations) and sold as products.
• The amendments also do not apply to waste that is processed by recyclers and sold as a product.
• Waste is defined in the EP Act. The Factsheet: Assessing whether material is waste sets out the matters that are relevant to determining whether material is waste within the meaning of the EP Act definition.
• A key consideration in determining whether material is waste is whether it is wanted by the source/ producer of the material: If the material is sold by a producer to a third party for a fair value, this generally indicates that the material is a valuable commodity wanted by the producer for sale, and hence not ‘waste’. For example, material from bulk earthworks that is wanted by the producer for sale, and which is purchased by a third party at market value is not waste.
• If the material is determined to not be waste, the uncontaminated fill thresholds and testing regime are not relevant, however it is still recommended that the end user ensures the material is fit-for-purpose including whether its use could cause pollution, constitute an unreasonable emission under the EP Act, or create a contaminated site within the meaning of the Contaminated Sites Act 2003.

Testing is not required for waste that meets the definition of ‘clean fill’.

• Users should be able to demonstrate that the waste has been excavated or removed from the earth in areas that have not been subject to potentially contaminating land uses including industrial, commercial, mining or intensive agricultural activities.

In classifying waste material as ‘uncontaminated fill’, it is not necessary to test for every substance listed in Table 6 in the Waste Definitions.  

• The testing and sampling regime (Table 7) in the Waste Definitions allows for testing of substances based on the land use history of the site of origin for uncontaminated fill. This ensures that only likely contaminants are tested for, reducing the cost and complexity of the testing regime.
• The sampling and testing requirements are based on minimum data requirements to determine a 95 per cent upper confidence limit (of the average) and the requirement to characterise each domain or stockpile separately. This ensures that only testing of relevant substances is undertaken, and that the results are practical in their application.
• A user should be able to demonstrate that reasonable effort has been applied in determining that material is uncontaminated fill. It is recommended that records are maintained that demonstrate how information relating to the originating site’s historic activities was sought and considered in determining the list of substances to be tested for, together with the analytical results and any statistical assessment and data interpretation that has been undertaken.