Keeping Hillside in mind’s eye

For the last six months I have been a member of a steering group led by the Otago Chamber of Commerce and whose members include local MPs, city councillors, Hillside staff and representatives of the nearly 70 organisations that support carriage construction at the Hillside Engineering workshops in Dunedin.

The Government has advanced $500 million to KiwiRail for the electrification of Auckland and there was a very strong push for KiwiRail’s Dunedin-based engineering workshop to undertake at least some of that construction work.

While KiwiRail has ruled out Hillside being a lead tenderer in the tendering process, I’m neither surprised nor disappointed by this. The best advice the group received was that holding the head tender would not be in Hillside’s best interests, but that it still had a chance of doing at least some of the construction work under a subcontract with the head tenderer. The tender documents do encourage prospective tenderers to use kiwi companies where possible and Hillside is well positioned to market their skills to those organisations. The New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Industry Capability Network is also active in identifying potential tenderers and letting them know what’s able to be done in New Zealand.

The work of promoting Hillside and its associated Dunedin-based businesses continues and I’m optimistic that at least some of that work will come Dunedin’s way.