Ventia is driving significant value, efficiencies, and capability for the Australian Defence Force with the early delivery of heavy equipment through the Land 8120 Phase 1 contract – setting a high industry benchmark.  

The Land 8120 Phase 1 contract sees Ventia lead a team of equipment manufacturers and local engineering specialists to deliver over 300 earth-moving and materials-handling vehicles to Defence. The 13 different types of vehicles include cranes, excavators, dozers, telehandlers, and front-end loaders and each vehicle type requires varying levels of modifications to meet specialist Defence requirements. 

The modifications include changes to facilitate air transportability and fording and many of the vehicles are provided with complex bespoke transport cradles for attachments such as buckets, augers, and hook blocks.

The vehicles replace multiple legacy fleets, consolidate engineering support platforms, and provide industry-leading technology and safety.

The introduction of each new system into service requires significant integrated logistics support (ILS). Ventia’s ILS team has delivered over 260 technical documents to support this introduction into service and is currently running introduction into service training to familiarise Australian Defence Force (ADF) operators with the new vehicles.

Meeting the schedule on Defence acquisition programs is often challenging due to the bespoke nature of Defence equipment and the intricacies of introducing capabilities into Defence’s complex systems – but the program has made impressive progress, with over 100 vehicles delivered to date on or ahead of schedule against a backdrop of supply chain shortages and global shipping delays.

Seeing through complexity to deliver value

The primary enabler of the success on the project to date has been the genuine collaborative nature of the program. The Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) and the Ventia team have had a committed focus on collaboration, striving to deliver best-for-program outcomes. This has fostered a productive, open, and innovative environment that has produced genuine benefits, including acceleration of the program, cost savings to Defence, substitution of vehicle models, and other changes to specifications to increase capability and a reduction in the environmental footprint due to changes in vehicle transport.

For example, Ventia recognised that the rapid introduction of 13 new vehicle types presented a significant training burden on Defence members, taking them away from their core roles as well as incurring significant monetary costs. Seeking to minimise this burden, with the support of Defence, Ventia investigated combining the training for similar vehicle types into a single course. This concept has been trialled successfully for Ventia the medium and light excavators in 2023 and the training program has been subsequently consolidated for several other variants. 

This consolidated approach led to a decrease in training days from 522 down to 327.5. This required novel approaches, such as the use of commercial versions of some vehicle types in training with configuration differences, systematically addressed parts of the training process. In addition to the significant reduction in training burden, this approach is saving Defence direct and indirect costs and means that for some vehicle types, operators are trained prior to vehicle delivery allowing immediate utilisation.

Ventia also developed an e-learning module that supported the in-person training to provide varied learning applications to aid diverse learning styles and memorisation. This will continue to provide benefits for new recruits and as a refresher training aid.

$7m boost to the local economy

The Land 8120 contract brings together equipment manufactures and local engineering specialists to offer the full breadth of services sought by the ADF. One of these is Australian and veteran-owned ECLIPS that Ventia has engaged to design and build the Complete Equipment Schedule (CES) Cradle Platforms which safely and securely store and facilitate the transport of equipment attachments such as buckets, augers, and hook blocks.

The initial proposal is to design the CES Cradle Platforms in Australia and manufacture overseas. During discussions, ECLIPS identified the opportunity to transfer the manufacture of the CES Cradle Platforms to Australia. This approach significantly decreased program risk and provided genuine AIC benefits. ECLIPS has established a new production facility in Melbourne, leveraging an existing ecosystem of local suppliers and developed advanced manufacturing systems such as robotic plasma cutting. This approach to Australian fabrication not only increases the workshare in Australia for existing SMEs, but also develops new capability that can be leveraged for other Defence programs and commercial industry.

The ECLIPS Australian fabricated solution injected an extra $7.1 million into the local economy.

Shaun Moore, managing director at ECLIPS, states: “It has been our experience that Ventia has set a new benchmark in authentic project collaboration with SMEs. At ECLIPS, we are very proud of the achievements on this project, but we recognise how important Ventia’s ‘teamwork approach’ has been to our project’s success.”

This article was originally published on Defence Connect.