CLOUGH COMPLETES KUTUBU ACCESS ROAD

Clough and Oil Search marked the successful completion of the Kutubu Access Road with a day of activities and celebration in recognition of the project team and local community.

The celebration was hosted at the Fogomau School in Hegeso and was inaugurated with a prayer from Pastor George Hare, followed by touch rugby games and a traditional mumu barbecue and concluded with an awards presentation.

The day was an important milestone for Clough and the Earthquake Response Project team following 15 months of working with Oil Search to repair roads, bridges, camps and infrastructure that was damaged in the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit the Southern Highlands in February 2018. This infrastructure links the Kutubu region with the Highlands highway and is a major access road providing a crucial logistics route for supplies and passage to the local communities along the road.

Managing and coordinating a workforce made up of over 95% national labour, the Earthquake Response Project team completed a number of major and high-risk repair scopes in the Kutubu region over the past 476 days and to date remains LTI and injury free. This is a major safety achievement also worthy of celebration.

Clough has over 35 years’ experience in Papua New Guinea and its success is dependent on building relationships with and transferring skills to the local workforce, as well as effective partnerships with clients, their host communities and project partners.

Ronnie Prosser, Clough senior project manager for the Earthquake Response Project team said, “Repairing the roads and bridges along the Kutubu Access Road was the most challenging and most rewarding scope the Clough team has completed so far. Roads and bridges bring people together, it brings communities together and the milestone could not have been achieved without a team effort from Oil Search, the local land owner companies and the support of the communities along the road. It is only because we all worked together that we were able to successfully and safely complete this project.”

CLOUGH HAS PROUDLY COMPLETED OVER 2000 ICONIC ENERGY, MINING AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS ACROSS AUSTRALIA AND AROUND THE WORLD.

2019 marks 100 years of Clough, a time to celebrate all of the company’s achievements and successes.

Clough was founded in Perth, Western Australia, in 1919 by John Oswald Clough as a construction company that built quality homes, schools and commercial properties.

John’s son, Harold, joined the Clough company in 1954, and soon after, the status of the company soared to new heights when Clough won a contract to build Perth’s first high-rise building – The National Mutual Building. It was the first major office building completed in Perth after World War II, the city’s first high-rise, and a game-changer for Clough, underpinning its growth from three employees to 100.

In 1957, Clough was awarded its first major infrastructure project, the Narrows Bridge in Perth. The Narrows Bridge project was a landmark, not only for the company, but for Western Australian history, as prior to its award there were no civil engineering contractors in the whole of Australia. It was at this time that Clough’s reputation as a pioneering engineering contractor was cemented.

As the company grew, it branched into emerging markets in Western Australia, and was instrumental in the development of the state’s resources sector. When the Western Australian government sought to establish the state as an oil and gas producer, it was Clough that undertook its first project on Barrow Island in 1966 for Western Australian Petroleum Ltd.

1966 also saw Clough’s first mining project, the Parker Point Ore Wharf for Hamersley Iron (now Rio Tinto), also starting a long-lasting engagement as a marine contractor of choice.

The journey for Clough has always been dynamic as the cyclical nature of its markets has often necessitated changes to the services or geographies in which the company operates. Clough has completed over 2 000 challenging projects across 33 different countries, in locations from Western Australia’s scorching Pilbara region, to the remote Gobi Desert, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, North Sumatra, Nigeria and Pakistan, to name a few.

Always important to the Clough organisation is the reputation of leaving a positive legacy. Through Clough’s scholarships, graduate and internship programmes, Clough has played a significant role in ensuring Australian engineering remains at the highest standard. Clough has provided over 300 scholarships since the establishment of its Clough Scholars programme in 1972 and with the establishment of the Clough Foundation in 2014, over AU$1 million has been donated to community partners in Australia and overseas.

Today, Clough employs approximately 2 000 employees in 17 offices around the world working with its clients to deliver their visions, and since 2013 is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Murray & Roberts Group.

The milestone centenary year of 2019 has marked several significant achievements for the company with the award of projects in new territories and its official expansion into North America with the acquisition of a business unit in Houston, Texas. As the strength of the company grows, it continues to make remarkable strides. Clough’s successes over its centenary, and today, have only been made possible by its people, the true cornerstone of the organisation. It is the pioneering spirit that has carried Clough through the last 100 years and will continue to inspire the next 100.