Projects

Current and recent projects include:

NQ Australian Technical College Consortium
Completed in an extremely tight timeframe, this project was undertaken in partnership with associates: Marketing and strategic planning consultant, Colin Balfour of Balfour Consulting; and Economist, Colin Dwyer of North Australia Economics.

Working with a Consortium of local industry and education stakeholders, the project team developed the business model and successful tender for the $14m North Queensland Australian Technical College.

In addition to these key outputs, the project team delivered 7 separate Management Plans which are now guiding the newly formed College Board and recently appointed senior management team:
    •    Year 1-5  Strategic Plan,
    •    Year 1     Business Plan,
    •    Year 0-1  Marketing Plan,
    •    Year 1     Operations Plan,
    •    Year 0-4  Risk Management Plan
    •    Year 0-1  Implementation Plan
    •    Year 0-4  Financial Plan

The purpose-built Technical College will open its doors to its first students at the beginning of the 2007 academic year.


Townsville Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Centre Unit Trust
This long and in part pro-bono consultancy required a delicate balancing of the aspirations, visions and concerns of four Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholder groups, five Government Grant bodies and a range of other external stakeholders.

The Townsville Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Centre has a 30-year or more history for indigenous people in North Queensland.  My involvement is more recent, starting after the 2003 purchase by the Unit Trust of the Reef HQ Complex in Townsville's tourism precinct.

Providing leadership to a 5-member Board of volunteers with limited time, little commercial experience and limited capacity, the $6 million project required:
•    Agreeing a design for major building renovations to house
      the Cultural Centre
•    Contracting and managing of those works
•    Agreeing the design of the interpretative story to be housed
      in the Cultural Centre
•    Contracting and managing that interpretative fit-out
•    Establishing the business entity to operate the Cultural Centre
•    Initial staffing of the Centre
•    Negotiating and then managing, monitoring and reporting on
     5 separate government grants
•    Successful negotiation for renewal of the Trust's key tenancy - GBRMPA

The project was completed with a major review of the Unit Trust and its governance, structure and operations - providing recommendations for reform and restructuring

The Townsville Cultural Centre opened it's doors on 1 August 2005 - more than 30 years after the concept was first raised by the local community.


Dept. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy, North Qld Regional Office
Like most cities, Townsville has it rough sleepers and other people who occupy its public spaces and who have complex needs such as homelessness, alcoholism, and/or mental illness.

As part of the State Government's response to the issue I was engaged to assist local service providers to design a case management model that integrated services to this target group.
 
A workshop with over 30 stakeholders successfully developed the Townsville / Thuringowa Protocol on  Integrated Case Management for People with Complex Needs. More importantly, the workshop built strong stakeholder commitment to the  protocol  .......... Resources & Tools


Bindal Sharks Football Club
A practical and very hands-on project to prepare a Sports Development Strategy for indigenous young people in Townsville and Thuringowa that the Bindal Sharks then successfully gain grant funds to implement.

The project also produced some very practical Operations and Resource manuals that the trainees employed under the Strategy were able to implement.  .......... Resources & Tools


Girringun Aboriginal Corporation
Girringun is a somewhat unique Aboriginal organisation comprising as it does, 9 different traditional owner groups whose country is centred on Cardwell in North Queensland.  It's success has been in bringing these groups together to speak with a strong voice and act collectively to improve their wellbeing.

Despite its real on-the-ground achievements over the years and strong support and even accolades from all sorts of stakeholders, leaders and luminaries, Girringun always had problems with funding - largely because it never easily fitted program guidelines or departmental planning frameworks.  To make it worse the Traditional Owner's Country that Girringun represented straddled two administrative regions used by Government Departments - meaning that they had to deal with two of everything.

After assisting Girringun to develop a planning framework that they used to build a successful case to the Queensland Government for the establishment of a Negotiation Table, I was engaged to review their services and business model.

As part of our review we developed and costed a Services Brokerage Model that was able to demonstrate the full commercial cost if the services then provided by Girringun had to be replaced. .......... Resources & Tools