Kim Drubbel
Director - Strategy & Investment
Turning market and workforce risks into strategic advantages
Workforce shortages, skills gaps, and supply-chain disruptions are no longer just operational headaches, they’re strategic challenges reshaping how complex projects are planned and delivered. For large-scale infrastructure programs, anticipating these pressures isn’t just valuable, it’s essential.
Kim Drubbel
At RPS, we bring together forecasting, spatial intelligence, and human insight to help clients get ahead of risk. By integrating data-driven modelling, stakeholder insight, and market knowledge, we help project teams move beyond reacting to constraints and instead shape conditions for investment success.
Our recent work supporting a major infrastructure initiative demonstrates how thoughtful, joined-up analysis can inform smarter, faster and more confident delivery.
Anticipate instead of react
Forecasting labour constraints is more than a resourcing exercise, it’s a lever for strategic control. Through predictive analytics and econometric modelling, we identified looming trade shortfalls, wage escalation risks, and subcontractor pinch points years before peak delivery. That foresight gave decision-makers space to engage early, adjust work packaging, align procurement, and sequence activity to avoid known pressure periods. Planning became proactive, not reactive.
This also enabled strategic procurement. By quantifying future supply-demand imbalances, by trade and location, we support the client in securing critical resources at the right time, locking in capacity before market pressure intensifies.
Local knowledge, strategic precision
Workforce planning succeeds when it reflects real-world dynamics, not just abstract averages. While state-wide statistics set the scene, they often mask regional disparities and hyper-local constraints. To provide a more accurate view, we combined static workforce data with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 60-minute catchment modelling, contractor insights, and a detailed scan of the forward project pipeline.
This layered approach enabled us to understand not just how many workers exist, but how many are realistically accessible, by trade, by location, and by delivery window. We spatially mapped worker commuting patterns, filtered participation by qualification and trade, and overlaid timelines for competing projects to capture drawdown effects and overlap risk.
The result? A nuanced, trade-specific workforce picture calibrated to market reality. It helped avoid unrealistic assumptions about labour supply and supported more targeted, defensible workforce strategies, grounded in evidence, not guesswork.
Scenario planning for greater resilience
Markets shift. Projects pause or accelerate. New investments emerge while others stall. In such a fluid environment, no single forecast can capture the full picture. That’s why we modelled a detailed project pipeline and explored a range of delivery and workforce scenarios to test the resilience of different planning strategies.
Using a hybrid modelling approach, we combined project-level data, macroeconomic trends, and historical labour and productivity patterns. This enabled us to account for multiple variables, from approvals and funding flows to migration settings, industry attrition, and changes in macro-economic conditions.
Each scenario helped to clarify the conditions under which workforce or delivery pressures might intensify. We identified tipping points, pressure peaks, and opportunities to smooth labour demand through sequencing, modularisation, or rescoping.
The result? Strategic options that are not only responsive to change—but grounded in data, timing, and an understanding of market behaviour.
Predictive supply chain intelligence
Workforce isn't the only constraint. Equipment lead times, material volatility, and plant access also shape delivery feasibility. That’s why we layered in a predictive view of supply chain pressure, looking at everything from crane availability to concrete plant proximity and material haulage congestion.
We mapped not just the inputs, but also the risk signals, price movements, import lags, and regional project overlaps, to build a heatmap of supply-chain risk by project phase. This supported early supplier engagement, sequencing decisions, and on-site planning.
Sustainable workforce solutions
Shortages aren’t always cyclical. They often reflect deeper, structural challenges, such as attrition in ageing trades, skills gaps in emerging technologies, or clearance requirements for secure work environments.
To understand these dynamics, we combined quantitative analysis with stakeholder engagement to capture lived experience across the supply chain. This revealed hidden barriers like mismatch between qualification and job readiness, or delays in credentialing and onboarding processes.
These insights helped shift the focus from hiring to building: from filling gaps to shaping pathways for long-term, sustainable workforce development.
The RPS Method: Data-driven. Place-based. Delivery-focused.
Market Capacity Framework
Built for complexity - applicable across sectors
Our approach was purpose-built for a major infrastructure program, but it doesn’t stop there. These methods apply wherever delivery risk is layered, timelines are critical, and the market is tight. That includes energy transition projects, precinct-scale urban development, defence programs, and remote regional builds.
The common thread? Complexity. And a need for clarity.
At RPS, we help clients decode the market forces shaping their projects. With the right foresight, timing, and place-based insight, even the toughest delivery environments can be navigated with confidence.
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