Hi all,

First things first, happy new year! I hope you’ve had a safe start to 2024 and were able to spend some quality time with family and friends over the break.

Announcing our December quarter peer recognition winners

December concluded our second quarter of the peer recognition program, with 31 nominations across the five award categories and the winners decided on by vote from senior management. As a reminder, the program provides each of us the opportunity to formally celebrate and reward our peers who demonstrate our Think Safe, Act Safe, Home Safe motto or one of the company values in their work.

Category: Think Safe, Act Safe, Home Safe
Winner: James Rosario, Electrician, E&I - Camden West WWTP

James has won the Think Safe, Act Safe, Home Safe award for ensuring his colleagues stayed safe during the intense heat wave in Sydney by providing cold water to his team on-site, encouraging regular breaks and assisting the HSE team in promoting safety during hot weather. This initiative from James aligns with our Think Safe, Act Safe, Home Safe motto and guiding principle of “you have a safety mindset by keeping yourself and others safe.”

Category: Passion
Winner: Carly Tomison, Project Coordinator, Elect Energy

Carly has won the Passion award for her ability to adapt to the environment around her, learn new skills and expand her existing knowledge to ensure the success of her department and team during a period of leadership transition. Carly’s work ethic aligns with our value of Passion and guiding principles of “You strive for excellence and inspire others”, “You never stop learning and improving”, and “You care about our success”.

Category: Creativity
Winner: Thomas Murphy, Site Manager, Construction, Chifley Square

Tommy has won the Creativity award for improving our new online material ordering portal by suggesting a function to allow site teams to record their received goods from their orders directly into the portal. This significantly improves on the current process of manually matching paper copies of the purchase order to the delivery docket and filing. This initiative from Tommy aligns with our value of Creativity and guiding principle: “You seek opportunities to develop new solutions and ideas.”

Category: Collaboration
Winner:  Luke Van Der Weyden, Site Manager, ACT, Jindabyne Education Campus

Luke has won the Collaboration award for working highly effectively with his team, subcontractors, clients, suppliers, and the local community, which is particularly vital when working on a regional job. When additional labour was needed on the project, Luke went the extra step of door knocking in the local area which proved successful. This initiative from Luke aligns with our value of Collaboration and guiding principle of “You work with and respect our clients and supply chain to accomplish great results.”

Category: Trust
Winner: Jack Fletcher, Jnr Project Manager, Elect Energy, OSD North and South Pitt Street

Jack has won the Trust award for showing remarkable dedication to working night shifts for the past 3 months and taking on civil tasks, managing teams, and overcoming difficult situations with resilience and positivity during unconventional hours. His commitment to accountability is evident as he holds workers and clients to high standards and captures essential details in shift reports to keep the team well-informed and organised. Jack’s work ethic aligns with our value of Trust and guiding principles: “You overcome challenges and deliver on your commitments,” “You hold yourself and others accountable” and “you’re reliable and will be there for your team.”

A congratulations to all our winners and nominees for the December quarter who act as role models in their day-to-day work! The awards will be presented to our winners over the coming weeks. The full list of nominees can be found in the following presentation. Nominations are open for the current quarter with the winners and nominees to be announced in April.

Click here to download presentation

New business

On the new business front, for December, a congratulations to:

• Wollongong branch, for picking up works at HMAS Creswell with new client PSG. This win extends on our experience in Defence which is a target growth sector for Star Group.
• Elect Energy, who are working through contractual close on the HV package for the St. George Hospital Stage 3 redevelopment with Besix Watpac. This win follows our AV division also picking up works on this project as announced earlier in 2023.
• ACT Branch, for picking up works at Canberra Hospital with Multiplex.

Looking ahead to 2024, we continue to track and tender on a diversified pipeline of work across sectors, as illustrated in the below charts. For work we are actively tendering on, there are several key targets that I hope to be able to share more on in the coming months. The successful conversion of these targets, alongside the ramp-up of existing projects on our workbook, should see the Group quite busy as we approach the middle of the year and into 2025. In the meantime, I continue to acknowledge the patience of some of our team members in Sydney on labour-hire arrangements.

Launching our new performance appraisal process for salaried employees 

In December, excitingly we announced the launch of our new performance appraisal process for salaried employees. For those impacted, the intent of this change is to help facilitate higher quality conversations with your manager in a structured way about your performance and development in support of our #1 in Employee Experience goal. This quarter, we will also be looking at the performance review process for our field-based, wage employees. Watch this space as there will be something new coming for these employees as well. A big thank you to Ryan Davey for driving this important initiative, and I look forward to seeing this in action and hearing feedback on the process over the coming months.

Cheers,
John 

John Andrews
Group CEO