Page 33 - Australian Defence Magazine February 2022

FEBRUARY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
DEFENCE BUSINESS DEBSS 33
LEFT: Held at Canberra’s Hotel Realm in Canberra on 13 December DEBSS 2021 attracted more than 330 attendees and more delegates joined the live stream.
continue to evolve and assess better ways of doing things. To that end, Defence is proceeding with service delivery re- form under a Base Services Transformation program. The department will develop a service delivery digital platform to make it easier for Australian businesses to engage with Defence, enter the marketplace, bid for and win work.”
DEFENCE SECURITY AND ESTATE GROUP
The first keynote speaker at DEBSS 2021 was Celia Per- kins, who took over as DEPSEC of E&IG in August and she revealed that her organisation has been expanded to include the security function, becoming the Defence Secu- rity and Estate Group on 1 December.
Noting the challenging times described by Minister Price in her address, Perkins said around $270 billion of capital investment has been committed over the coming decade in response. “We intend that the Defence Estate will shape regional partnerships by providing facilities, training areas and ranges to enable increased partner country training and conduct of exercises with the ADF,” she said, highlight- ing the Minister’s earlier reference to the US Force Posture Initiative and Australia–Singapore Military Training Initia- tive (ASMTI) as examples.
“We will help to deter actions against Australia through the deployment from our bases of ADF and partner country capabilities if required, and providing support to sustain functions at our bases and training areas. We will enable the ADF to respond with force if required, by ensuring bas- es are prepared for operational and surge requirements.”
In response, Perkins said the Security and Estate Group will be releasing its updated strategy in 2022, to align with the intent of the recent Force Structure Plan and Defence Strategic Update documents.
“The government has committed around $38 billion to be invested in estate and infrastructure over the next decade, and that figure grows in the subsequent decade,” she told delegates. “This money supports and sustains new capabili- ties and it delivers the upgrades and remediation to infra- structure and facilities that we desperately need, but it will take a sustained investment over many years to increase the remaining useful life of the Defence Estate.”
More than 176 active projects, worth $32 billion were be- ing managed across the estate at the end of the last finan- cial year. “We have a strong track record for on-time and on-budget delivery, which I know is unusual in Defence,” Perkins added. “But this annual growth is going to be an execution challenge for us and for you. We’re working on internal process reforms to support that growth and they will include streamlined approval processes and a program- matic approach that uses touch bases and regions in larger programs, rather than individual programs.”
BASE SERVICES TRANSFORMATION PROGRAM
Luke McLeod, Assistant Secretary Base Services Transfor- mation provided insight into progress of the program to re-
fresh the way services are provided at Defence bases, which he said was in the ‘exploration’ phase during the past year.
“We established two transformation themes back in June 2020, making Defence life like community life around how we can provide contemporary and modern services that will meet the current and emerging needs of our people, but also the future needs of our organisation,” he explained.
“We’re very much focussed on designing our services for the end user experience, we want our services to adopt our people’s preferences – not our people adopting the prefer- ences of our service delivery activities.”
The new contracts now being designed will be the fourth generation of the base services contracts and McLeod said while 2021 represented the exploration phase, the design phase will commence in 2022. The five streams of activity underway at the present time comprise engagement, scop- ing, buying, contracting and managing.
“One size doesn’t fit all: we know looking around our es- tate that there are some properties in locations that have far greater challenges than others – particularly those in our more remote locations. So, how might we provide ser- vices to those bases perhaps differently to the broad basis of our existing metropolitan or regional areas?” McLeod said.
INDIGENOUS PROCUREMENT
DEPSEC Perkins is a Defence Indigenous Champion, alongside Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld, and she told delegates that the ADF has exceeded its three per cent Indigenous employment target and it now aims for five per cent by 2025.
However, she said that engagement with Indigenous com- munities stretches beyond business opportunities, including sustainable land management initiatives. “We’re committed to working with local Indigenous com-
munities to work together to care for the
land and acknowledge their country,” she
explained. “We’re committed to listening
and learning from local Aboriginal and COMMITTED AROUND Torres Strait Islander communities in
which we live and serve.”
The benefits of partnering with Indig-
enous companies from both a local com-
munity and industry engagement stand- THE NEXT DECADE” point were discussed by Ranjan Rajagopal,
General Manager Commercial for Down-
er Defence, and Defence’s Anush Avakian, Assistant Secretary Non-Materiel Procurement.
“It’s important to recognise that good things have been happening in the space of Indigenous procurement, partic- ularly since the implementation of the Indigenous Procure- ment Policy, which has resulted in an explosion of demand for Indigenous businesses in procurement and that demand has been met by a surge of Indigenous businesses,” Rajago- pal told delegates.
“Now, according to Supply Nation, there are nearly 3,000 Indigenous businesses that have been verified by them – and these are just verified businesses. The unverified numbers range from anything between 11,000 and 15,000 and to- gether they contribute nearly $4 billion to the economy. ■
“THE GOVERNMENT HAS
$38 BILLION TO BE INVESTED IN ESTATE AND INFRASTRUCTURE OVER