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When working in the resource sector, travel to remote work sites becomes "just a part of the job". North Queensland based Dawsons Engineering has sent crews to almost every state in Australia in its 20 years of operation. Now, at a time where clients are driving value propositions across their supply chains, Dawsons are finding that the demand for skilled crews to travel far from home is higher than ever.

As a fully integrated Heavy Engineering and Labour Hire company, Dawsons support their mining clients with maintenance contracts, workshop repairs and fabrication, site installations and project work, labour hire and shutdown support.

Providing shutdown support has been an integral part of Dawsons' service offering since their first foray in to the mining industry, when Val Dawson regularly manned mill shutdowns of up to 120 men and crusher shuts averaging 40 men. A formidable challenge in the days before mobile phones, sophisticated employee databases and email - she is a formidable woman.

With the labour market more liquid than it has been for at least 8 years, logic would dictate that there would be no problem for mining companies to pick from a ready supply of local workers. This may be the case. But increasingly, Dawsons are attracting new clients, due to their reputation for supplying the real value inputs of safe work, industry knowledge and supervised crews.

"Any labour hire company can advertise and put together a list of names and skills" comments Dawsons' General Manager, Lloyd Everist. "One of our points of difference is that we actually operate in the industry. We run workshops, manage projects and take an active role in the maintenance strategies of our clients. We also have the capacity to carry and deploy a skilled workforce, complete with supervisors and tooling. Our crews know each other, they work together regularly, so our supervisors cooperate with our clients to assign work packs based on skill level, tickets and plain old "getting along" ability. Some of our workers and most of our supervisors have been with us in excess of 10 years, they know each other's strengths and are able to get the most out of our teams."

The guys are happy with it too, they enjoy the comradeship and peace of mind that comes with working on site with a familiar team of people in whom they trust, & who also value their safety as well as their valuable daily contribution.

Charters Towers is the centre of the world again
12 February 2009

Well it is for Dawsons Engineering. When the company decided that the time was right to establish a purpose built facility to perform off site heavy boilermaking from the mining industry, they examined prospective locations on the Atherton Tablelands, Cairns and Townsville, before settling on Charters Towers.

The key factors in the company's decision to choose Charters Towers were the availability of a mine savvy workforce and the superior heavy vehicle access to both the hard rock mining province around Mt Isa and the Northern Coal Fields.

Dawsons opened their operation - Charters Towers Buckets and Bodies in 2008 and have been steadily growing their customer base for off site heavy boilermaking, shutdown support and crane hire. Dawsons have also been able to utilise their three workshops in Cairns, Townsville and Charters Towers to manage their fabrication workload more efficiently to meet client deadlines.

With future growth in mind and contributing to a sustainable local manufacturing base a priority, Charters Towers Buckets and Bodies has recently employed three local heavy engineering apprentices and will continue to offer apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities to local youth. Dawsons Managing Director, Keith Dawson, has always been a firm believer in providing training opportunities. "Someone gave me a go when I was a kid" says Keith "It set me up for life. Now that I'm in a position to provide that same opportunity to someone else, it's the least I can do."

Charters Towers is no stranger to being the centre of attention, at the height of the gold rush of the 1890s, the Charters Towers Stock Exchange in the beautiful Royal Arcade building was known as "The World" because of its importance to the economy and the gold rush and its daily telegraph contact with the London Stock Exchange. Home to the only stock exchange in regional Australia, Charters Towers was the second biggest city in Queensland.