Part of the team from Global Engineering … from left, Operations Manager Steve Ashcroft, owner Shannyn Perry and Sue Beu (Administration)

February 27, 2013

Meet Global Engineering … a small business success story which started in Kingaroy and is now part of Australia’s booming resources sector.

Shannyn Perry and her husband Lachlan began the engineering and construction services contracting company as a home-based business in July 2011, and started to ramp up operations in January 2012.

They now have six employees at their office in Kingaroy Street as well as 22 workers based at either Moomba or Innamincka in South Australia and Windorah in far-western Queensland – and 75 per cent of these employees are South Burnett locals.

Shannyn was born and bred in Kingaroy and educated at Kingaroy State High School.

She met Lachlan 10 years ago and they’ve been married for four years. They have two children Emily, 3, and Ari, 1.

Lachlan worked as a construction supervisor in the oil and gas industry, managing contractors on site, when he decided to go out on his own as a sub-contractor.

“We then saw the opportunity to take it one step further and start our own company,” Shannyn told southburnett.com.au today.

“We started from home but it quickly became too big for that. We moved into our new offices in September last year.”

Shannyn and Lachlan supply fully qualified mechanical and civil engineering tradespeople to work in the oil and gas industry.

Their employees do everything from installing new pipelines and tank frames, to facility expansion and camp maintenance.

Global Engineering handles the logistics of getting the workers to the site as well as ensuring their skill sets are up-to-date.

In addition to the South Burnett employees, Global Engineering also has workers based in Adelaide, Cairns and Brisbane.

Up until last week, the work teams had to drive Brisbane, then fly to Adelaide, change flights and then drive for two hours to get to their work site.

This has all changed now with the assistance of another Kingaroy-based company, Peter McNamara’s Australian Pilot Training Academy.

Peter is supplying air transport to Global Engineering so that nine workers can be flown directly to their work sites.

Currently, a nine-seater Beechworth is being used – it made its debut flight for Global Engineering last Thursday – but this may be replaced by a 14-seater to allow more workers to be transported on one flight.

The employees work on a “two weeks on / two weeks off” basis.

Thursday’s flight took nine men down to the Cooper Basin and brought nine back.

“FIFO (fly-in flyout) has allowed us to employ a lot more people locally,” Global Engineering Operations Manager Steve Ashcroft said.

“Many were sub-contractors before and are now working as employees.

“A lot of the guys haven’t had a lot of experience in the oil and gas industry. They had trade-based skills not industry-based skills.

“We have supplied the training for them so they now have the specific requirements for the client.

“We have not only brought new jobs to the area, we have brought new skills to the area, too.”

Shannyn said the flights were more expensive but were cost effective because they were safer and saved a lot of time.

“There is less travel and far less time on the road. They can get to the site in four hours and still do a half-day’s work. It makes a huge difference,” she said.

Shannyn said Global Engineering had received an amazing response to what it’s doing.

“We receive five or six resumes a day from people wanting to work for us,” she said.