Twenty years ago I made my last visit to Bougainville and JDA took its first faltering steps as an organisation. I was on leave from Bougainville Copper (CRA/RioTinto) at the time, having been with the project since 1970. There was not much for a recruiter to do by that stage, but the Bougainville Liberation Army (on the other hand) was extremely busy destroying the power lines between Loloho and Panguna.

The first step for our business was an exploratory visit to Zambia. My friend and former Bougainville Copper workmate, Ian Smith recognized that some of the highly experienced mining people that were rushing to leave Bougainville may be interested in moving to Zambia with his client, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mine (ZCCM). In my two weeks based at the ZCCM guest house (in Kitwe) I visited all of the significant ZCCM properties including Mufilira, Luanshya, Nchanga and Konkola.

ZCCM Manager Human Resources, Douglas Meleki supplied me with an ageing Peugeot, a map of the Copper Belt, and company and country phone books and off I went. He was quite surprised that I took the trouble to cover so much of their operation and that I insisted on touring their underground works. Over the two week period I was able to visit all of the relevant schools, meet with local medical personnel and survey the banking and retail facilities available.

Over the next 18 months we relocated a significant team of mining engineers, geologists and senior maintenance staff from Australia and North America. Many of these people remain in close contact with us to this day.

Twenty years on we are almost at the end of the most difficult trading year we have ever experienced. It is now 12 months since (almost overnight) most of our order book was cancelled and we were forced to slash our overheads in indecent haste and in a manner that severely distressed Christene and me, and everyone near to us. We now look back over this period and wonder how we have been able to protect our main assets - our key staff and our database. Somehow we have managed to maintain enough resources to ensure that we are fully prepared for the robust trading conditions that will greet us in the New Year.

We have a number of LNG projects that are quickly emerging; commodity prices are such that miners are ramping up production and (at last) the resources sector is on the move again. However it will take a little more time for all of this positive activity to affect the “people” business. The lay offs were so severe that there are still high quality staff who are underemployed and who are being paid significantly less than they were last year. We are bruised and battered, but we now look forward to receiving a more respectful tone from employers and to also being able to offer real assistance to our legion of loyal JDA networkers.

One heartening recent development is the promise surrounding some of our overseas clients. We expect to grow our business in several offshore locations. These include Central Asia, North Africa and South America. French language skills remain in high demand and to a lesser extent so does Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. Within the JDA consulting and sales teams we maintain the language capabilities necessary to operate in most of these locations. 

If you have not updated your CV of late, then it would be prudent to do so. Please keep a watch on the website for opportunities. You now have a smaller group of consultants watching over your career.

On behalf of Christene and the JDA team, I would like to wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy Christmas and a healthy 2010.

Kind regards

John Davidson
Managing Director

Released: 16 December 2009