Page 72 - Defence Industry Guide #54 2021

72 NEWS
ADM’s Defence Industry Guide 2021 | Edition 54 | www.defencesuppliers.com.au
JLB-YARAN MOVES PAST THE NUMBERS
THE OBJECTIVE of the Common- wealth’s Indigenous Procurement Pol- icy (IPP) is unambiguous: “To stimu- late Indigenous entrepreneurship, business and economic development, providing Indigenous Australians with more opportunities to participate in the economy.”
The IPP aims to achieve that ob- jective through the kind of heavily quantitative methods you’d expect to see in a government document. Each government portfolio has an annual target it must reach; a ‘mandatory set aside’ allows Indigenous enterprises to bid pre-market for projects worth between $80,000 and $200,000; and participation targets are mandated for contracts wholly delivered in Australia worth over $7.5 million.
The measures of success are simi- larly unambiguous: an increase in the number of Indigenous enterprises contracted to the Commonwealth, and an increase in the volume and val- ue of contracts awarded to Indigenous enterprises.
These numbers tell a clean story, but they don’t tell the whole story – some- thing that Indigenous-owned and vet- eran-owned and managed consultancy firm JLB-Yaran is trying to change.
“In the last few years, Defence pro- grams began requiring more resourc- ing and professional services,” Gen- eral Manager and former RAN officer Hayden Surrao said to ADM. “There was an opportunity for Australian SMEs to provide professional services and since then we’ve grown from a couple of consultants working on mari- time programs in Adelaide to over 30 consultants – mostly Defence veterans – working across domains in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle and Canberra.”
The Major Service Provider model
EWEN LEVICK | MELBOURNE
brought in by Defence, which man- dates 30 per cent outsourcing to SMEs, has also helped the company bring the experience of its veterans back into the Defence ecosystem.
“It’s allowed us to develop our niche capability,” Surrao said. “The quicker we grow, the more we can give back to Defence. The growth of SMEs is cru- cial to the long-term sovereignty and viability of Australian defence indus-
“WE WANT TO SEE MORE MANAGERS, MORE LEADERS, MORE EXECUTIVE-LEVEL DIRECTORS”
try. And as an Indigenous-owned com- pany, that money also flows back into Indigenous employment opportunities we are creating.”
Whilst the company’s main busi- ness is providing veteran expertise to Defence programs – including the Future Submarine Program, Air 6500, Land 200, Maritime and Land Sys- tems Divisions, ISREW branch, and much more – nurturing Indigenous talent is central to JLB-Yaran’s ethos. The company runs the Indigenous De-
ABOVE: JLB Yaran General Manager and former RAN officer Hayden Surrao.
velopment and Employment Program (IDEP), which brings talent into entry- level positions in Defence and mentors them onwards through their career, with Indigenous APS employees also in the program.
“IDEP is creating opportunities for Indigenous talent that will remain with Defence for the next 30-40 years,” Surrao said. “The Defence workforce needs to increase whether they’re In- digenous or non-Indigenous – but we think there’s a real opportunity to help increase Indigenous representation.
“To grow a diverse workforce, we need more women in Defence, we need more Indigenous people in Defence, and if we can engage those different skillsets the industry will create a stronger sovereign capability. It makes sense to look outside what we’ve done historically.”
This is where JLB-Yaran diverts from the metric-based approach of the IPP – moving away from ticked boxes and into a tailored approach that aims to lift Indigenous talent into leader- ship positions.
“Metrics can be misleading,” Surrao said. “It’s not necessarily how many, it’s where are they, what levels of man- agement, what levels of influence, whether they’re developing and grow- ing careers. We don’t run an employ- ment program – we run a professional development program. We want to see more managers, more leaders, more executive-level directors.
“The IPP is a great thing. It’s been fantastic for creating opportunities for Indigenous people. But what we’d like to see is companies saying, ‘we want to have an Indigenous director in the next 10-15 years’, and growing that internally. If you’re going to create generational change, you need to grow your people.” ■
SUPPLIED