JCA’s divisions, in particular it’s Project Planning Division, is experiencing unpresedented demand for it’s services, leading up to Christmas and into the new year.

Nick Wenn (Engineering Planning Manager) advises, “Not only have repeat clients in-undated us with request for our planning services, but new clients almost daily have expressed urgent need for our planners”.

Currently JCA’s has a team of 14 planners at their disposal, but also have 3 new planners joining (or re-joining) their team over the Christmas period.

A big thanks goes out to the recruitment company JCA utilise (Logic Recruitment) for their skill in securing these key additional planning resources.

For some time we at JCA have promoted the idea for certain projects, that clientelle use JCA’s contract/consulting services in lieu of employing full-time staff to perform a function/role which might not be permanent position.

There are beneifts of both options, and each circumstance needs to be weighed on it’s individual merits.

For smaller organisatons the risk of needing to maintain employment of new staff beyond completion of a role/project can be a major factor. Not having the ability to necessarily re-assign the employee to a new project may be costly.

Of course the employer always has the ability to terminate the employment giving between 1 to 4 weeks notice (depending upon the duration of employment to date), thereby minimising it’s exposure to lengthy non-productive periods. However employers should be careful not to gain a reputation as offering permament work, only to terminate staff when it suits them (making it difficult ultimately to re-hire those personnel when needed). Dismissal costs can also be very expensive.

There is also much argument about the cost of contract v’s direct employment… we consider this argumnet to be not totally substantiated. For instance most employers will have the exact same overheads/statuatry charges/employments costs that the contract provider does. Infact many contract providers overheads are much smaller than those of larger clients.

Using a contract/consulting service also avoids the need to pay an upfront placement fee. Instead that equivalent extra cost is essentially built in to the hourly rates and paid over the life of the contract period, instead of upfront.

Another argument for outsourcing over employing is that in times of low unemployment (as is eveident in Australia currently) it may not be possible to find personnel to employ direct. Outsourcing of personnel can either alleviate these problems on a temporary basis or fill that void for the life of the project.

JCA’s Document Control department, (LDC), is pleased to announce plans for the continued expansion of our document control capabilities.

With close (but impartial) alliances with the leading document control software/system sellers, LDC is pursuing it’s goal to become the leading provider of document control consulting services in Australia.

There currently is a severe lack of outsourceable document control services in Australia, and LDC aims to service a large slice of that need. With-in 2 years LDC plans to have a team of 10 to 20 document control experts to manage our clients doc control systems for short to long term project assignments.

One of the recent staff additions to LDC’s team, is Eden Winnacott. Eden comes to LDC with experience accross a range of projects as a document controller, and is a welcome addition to the JCA-LDC team with her understanding of various doc control systems.

LDC are also in discussions with a number of other potential document control staff and will make further announcements in the coming months.

The international planning & scheduling fraternity is this month in upgrade mode. With the recent release of Primavera’s newest update to it’s enterprise planning software version 6.0 afectionately being refered to as P6. An upgrade/replacement to version 5, Primavera have added a number of new and updated features, concentrating on collaborative planning features including web based access and reporting, this version is set to become the new benchmark in planning software.

Having received it’s updated licences of P6, JCA is also currently in exploration and testing mode, having said that JCA has already commenced utilisation of P6 on a number of projects, including the $1.1b new Fiona Stanley Hospital for the Western Australian department of Health.

Over the next few weeks JCA will be offering further services around P6 including expanded training in P6 environment and assistance with installation and simple set-up of P6.

For enquiries regarding purchasing of P6, we direct our clients to Primavera Australia (and their subsidiaries) the distributor of Primavera software in Australia.

Over the past several years, jca have participated in the work experience programme conducted by Cannington Community Education Support Centre.
This year Martin Stewart (a year 9 student) is participating in the Workplace Learning Programme with JCA. The Workplace Learning program is a subject designed to enable students with special needs to develop employability skills in a real work environment. The final outcome is to ease the transition from school to the world of work.

My name is Martin Roy Noel Stewart, I am 14 years old. I have brown hair, green eyes and I am 170cm tall. I belong to a family of five, mum and dad and my two sister’s. I have three pets, a cat and a dog and some tropical fish.
I go to Cannington Community ESC and I am in Year 9, my teacher’s name is Mrs Bagworth. Our class has two pet rats we named them Crystal and Isabella.

jca announcement
JCA are pleased to announce that it has been selected (again) to perform the detailed construction planning services for the next high-rise tower at Mirvac’s Burswood Peninsula Development.

Mirvac continue to sell dwellings at a rapid rate in this sought after locality of Burswood. To keep up with the demand Mirvac are fast-tracking construction of new high and low rise towers on the site.

With so much works happening on site at once, and being such a massive development, Mirvac continue to commission JCA Planning to carry out all it’s front end construction planning for each tower on the project to date.

Mirvac are also using JCA Training’s services to train their project team to conduct their day to day planning needs internally.

JCA Announcement - JCA Planning (Building Construction Department), have today secured another major Government Project, the Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Consulting to the Department of Housing and Works, JCA look forward to teaming up with other Design, Engineering and Project Management Firms on the project to deliver the project to the Western Australian Public.

The Site in Perth’s Southern Suburbs lies next to an existing Hospital (St John of God - Murdoch). The project is massive with a budget of approx $1.1 billion, and is targeted to be operational by 2013.

JCA looks forward to being an integral part of this exciting and valuable public project, and cement JCA as the choice Planner for the Western Australian Government, and it’s agencies.

For many years now JCA has provided specialist document control consulting services.

Run by our Resourcing Division (JCA Resoucing Pty Ltd) and trading as “Logic Document Control” (LDC) we offer a unique service, not currently offered elswhere in Australia. We do not sell document control systems, but we do have specialist consultants who are experienced with the major commercial products (whether they are collaborative web based systems or stand alone software loaded systems).

Our people are expert document controllers who are available to support the application/system you use, train your staff to use the system, and/or assign dedicated or part-time document controllers on your team.

Our team recommend and support systems such as Project Centre, Aconex, Primavera Contract Manager, and QDMS.

each system has it’s own merits, and LDC are availble to assess your company needs independantly and recommend/supervise the implementation of the chosen system.

New Assistant Manager (Project Support)

We have recently allocated an existing key employee, Mr Neal Bedingfeld, to the position of Resourcing Assistant manager, providing project support. With our division expanding over the past few years, we have a competent team of staff we have put together consulting to the Mining, Oil & Gas, Building and Engineering Construction Sector, for short to medium term assignments. We look forward to providing your business resource solutions. Please direct any queries to Neal Bedingfeld (08) 9322 4873 or nb@jcalogic.com

Plans for a new 60,000 seat outdoor stadium were unveiled today, with the State Government’s Stadium Taskforce declaring the proposed sites of Kitchener Park, Subiaco, and the old East Perth power station site were both suitable options.

The new stadium will incorporate a 22,000 seat reconfigurable lower tier of seating, allowing for AFL, Super 14 Rugby and international cricket, rugby and soccer events to be played. See video here

But that won’t be enough for Perth’s sports fans, with the taskforce also recommending the redevelopment of Members’ Equity Stadium, in East Perth, as the report found the construction of a purpose-built rectangular stadium was not viable at the current time.

The taskforce had been presented with a variety of options for the site, including a redevelopment of 55,000-seat Subiaco Oval and the construction of a similar site at Burswood.

However, the report found the Subiaco redevelopment option would not contain enough seating and leave the city in need of a separate rectangular stadium appropriate for rugby.