Western Sydney Airport exceeds employment targets in first year

Earthmovers at Badgerys Creek for the building of Western Sydney Airport. (WSA Co)

Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport says it has exceeded all its employment targets for local, indigenous and learning workers in its first year of earthworks projects.

Since construction began on 24 September 2018, about $37 million worth of work had been subcontracted to 24 local businesses, ranging from plumbers to fencing and demolition contractors, concrete pumping operations and plant equipment suppliers, Western Sydney Airport chief executive Graham Millett said on Tuesday.

Local workers living in a catchment from Narellan to Norwest, and Blacktown to Bringelly presently made up 54 per cent of the airport’s total workforce – almost double the construction phase target of 30 per cent.

Learning workers, such as apprentices and trainees, accounted for 34 per cent of the workforce at 30 June 2019, 14 per cent above target, while workers, classed under diversity accounted for 32 per cent (target, 10 per cent) and indigenous workers, three per cent (target, 2.4 per cent).

Millett, who grew up in the region, said that as the airport entered its second year of construction, the size of the project’s workforce would ramp up considerably.

“Western Sydney International will be the catalyst for the transformation of the region, creating jobs closer to where people live and delivering the infrastructure needed to make a growing Western Sydney an even better place to live and do business,” Millett said.

Construction of the proposed airport at Badgerys Creek began in September 2018, when bulldozers arrived to move about 1.8 million cubic metres of earth to prepare the ground for the eventual runway and terminal construction.