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People: Collaborating with certainty
Delivering certainty starts with people. Without the right talent, the best tools and plans go nowhere. And today, the pressure on skilled labour is growing fast.
Governments are investing. Private capital is flowing. Demand for infrastructure, clean energy, and life sciences space is soaring. But the workforce isn’t keeping pace.
That’s a huge risk. And we can’t fix it late in the process.
Smart clients are:
— Mapping skills needs early
— Building long-term partnerships
— Securing contractor capacity far ahead of time
— Creating work pipelines to retain niche and regional expertise
— Considering new procurement models
— Using technology to analyse and optimise productivity
— Investing in training to bolster local expertise in areas of high demand
But it’s not just about headcount. It’s about mindset.
We need to treat labour like a strategic asset, not a cost to be squeezed. That means:
— Fairer contracts, including risk sharing
— Early alignment on expectations
— Better collaboration across the value chain
When people are aligned, supported, and empowered, trust builds. Uncertainty drops. And delivery improves.
Certainty isn’t just about plans and numbers; it’s about people working together to make them real.
Case study
Adapting strategy around labour shortages
When a global tech sector client set out to deliver a multi-country construction programme, one of their biggest risks wasn’t cost, it was people. Skilled labour availability varied drastically across locations, with potential shortfalls threatening to delay delivery and increase costs.
Currie & Brown helped them adapt with confidence. Using our data analytics capability, we mapped the skilled trades needed for each project against local labour availability across key markets. This gave the client a clear, comparative view of where challenges were likely to emerge.
Armed with this insight, the client was able to proactively adjust their plans, modifying schedules, reallocating resources, and even rethinking site selection in some cases. Labour certainty became a strategic input, not a reactive problem.
It’s a clear example of how smart data, applied early, can help organisations build resilience and flexibility into the workforce strategy, before pressure points appear.