Overall Business Excellence / Building and Construction awards
Core Contracting Group
Sponsors: NAB / Hilton Manufacturing
Twenty years ago, Jarrod Bennell and Shane Duhau started with a dream of a successful business with a premium on family time.
And they wanted the same for their workers at their Hastings-based Core Contracting Group.
Since then, they say CCG has built a hard-earned reputation for the “safest, highest quality and most reliable” electrical and mechanical contracting services for heavy industrial plants, solar and wind farms and waste facilities.
The firm has moved to larger premises and taken on major projects such as the Sacyr food organics and composting facility in Dandenong South – one of Australia’s first.
It was also involved in one of Australia’s first soil-contamination recycling facilities, the Renex waste recycling plant. As well as BlueScope Steel’s customer service centre, Kiamal solar farm’s transformer and Stockyard Hill wind farm.
“CCG is proud to boast a long history of delivering quality outcomes, with a proven track record of repeat and referred clientele,” they say.
“We have not needed to advertise, promote or market our business to date.”
CCG also has a long history in providing mechanical and electrical apprenticeships.
Bennell and Duhau ascended from electrical apprentices themselves to managers at BlueScope Steel before embarking on their own enterprise in 2003.
At its Carrum Downs factory, CCG provided electrical and mechanical contracting, project management, rigging and scaffolding, fitting and turning, boiler-making, welding and workshop fabrication.
In 2017, it expanded to a second premises with a main office and fabrication workshop in Hastings.
CCG has grown from a yearly turnover of less than $500,000 to $7.5 million today, with plans to increase to $10 million over the next 10 years.
“CCG prides itself on the ability to continually deploy labour to our broad customer based sites on a 24 hour basis at short notice.
“This sets CCG apart from our competitors and prides itself on ‘being there’ for our customers.”
It employs 10 full-time supervisors and tradies, and a further 30 casual and part-time staff to flex-up during peak periods.
Staff incentives include Medallion Club membership, vouchers and lunch or dinner during shutdown outages.
Providing a nourishing workplace culture has led to high staff retention, with 95 per cent of its workforce at CCG for more than 10 years.
“Attracting staff has always been through word of mouth. We know people want to come and work for us – because they do.”
