A national labour hire and recruitment group delivering workforce to Tier 1 contractors and government clients across civil infrastructure, rail, tunnelling and traffic management. Three years of rapid growth had created compliance risk: a management system that was not scaling, project mobilisation built from scratch each time, and manual fatigue management in rail safeworking operations. Equilibrium rebuilt the system across all four entities and delivered the compliance framework that underpinned the group's Tier 1 project portfolio.
The client is a national labour hire and recruitment group operating across multiple legal entities, supplying workforce, traffic management, rail safeworking, security and cleaning services to Tier 1 contractors and government clients. Industries served included civil infrastructure, rail and tunnelling, manufacturing, logistics, traffic management and aviation. The group's project portfolio at peak included some of the largest transport infrastructure programs in NSW.
The Commercial and Compliance function held responsibility for tendering, contracts, ISO management systems, WHS, environmental, injury management and operational reporting across all entities in the group.
Three challenges had built up alongside the group's growth. The management system was holding up but not scaling: ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 documentation existed across separate entities, with audit overhead duplicated across each. Each entity ran its own audit cycle, paid its own certification cost and managed its own evidence trail. Second, project mobilisation was carrying compliance risk: new Tier 1 wins required fast establishment of site-specific WHS documentation, and the function was building this from scratch each time. Third, fatigue and rostering risk in safeworking operations was being managed manually, with limited automated guardrails against fatigue thresholds.
Integrated Management System rebuild. The IMS for Quality, Environment and Work Health and Safety was redeveloped from the ground up across all four group entities, including an Indigenous-engaged subsidiary delivering on government project commitments. The single IMS Manual replaced parallel documentation across the group, with shared policy, risk and process content and entity-specific operational annexes where required.
The rebuild aligned the system to the model WHS Act, the WHS Regulation 2017, Rail Safety National Law and ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001. Document control, internal audit, management review, incident management, injury management, purchasing and contractor management, fatigue management and emergency preparedness were all rebuilt as integrated procedures rather than discipline-specific silos.
Tier 1 project compliance package development. Standard operating procedures, SWMS libraries, SWI templates and risk register content were built specifically for the industries the group operated in. The packs were structured so that mobilisation onto a new Tier 1 project could draw from existing industry-tailored content rather than starting from scratch. Industries covered included airside civil works, rail tunnelling, line-wide rail systems, route clearance, manufacturing, traffic management and bulk earthworks.
The group successfully tendered on and delivered against this framework across a portfolio of major NSW infrastructure programs: airside civil works at Western Sydney Airport, the Western Harbour Tunnel program, Sydney Metro line-wide tunnels and rail safeworking, the SCAW project, WestConnex fit-out works, Metro Trains Sydney shutdown and maintenance, Blue Mountains route clearance, and bulk spoils handling for major civil projects.
Safeworking allocation and fatigue management. A custom allocation and rostering system was designed for rail safeworking staff with embedded risk mitigation measures. The system enforced fatigue thresholds at the point of scheduling, distributed work across the available pool to avoid concentration on the same individuals, and flagged shifts that would breach maximum hours or minimum recovery requirements before allocation.
Group ISO consolidation. The transition of subsidiaries and related entities to a Group ISO certification was managed end to end, replacing parallel audit cycles with a single integrated audit covering the group.
This was an embedded senior commercial and compliance leadership role over five years, covering the full lifecycle from system design through Tier 1 project delivery to group consolidation. The work spanned integrated management systems, Tier 1 mobilisation packages, fatigue-aware rostering and group ISO consolidation.
The pattern is exactly the kind of work Equilibrium delivers today as a managed service, drawing on the same playbook with current operational application. Organisations that are scaling into Tier 1 project delivery or managing multi-entity ISO obligations benefit most from this model: senior compliance capability embedded in the business rather than built from scratch internally.
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