Agilitus is carving out its lion’s share of the resources market by prioritising people, culture and quality engineering.
The fresh-faced Agilitus is quickly establishing itself as a pre-eminent engineering consultancy in the resources sector.
Amicably separating from its former joint venture partner in early 2025, Agilitus answers the industry’s call for agile, non-corporatised service providers that can make same-day decisions.
The new name and brand comes with a revitalised ownership structure with the business now being 100 per cent employee owned.
Agilitus co-founder and managing director Craig Bloxham said the company, with 460 employees and growing, prides itself on its culture.
“Tony (Comerford, Agilitus co-founder and technical director) and I have been working together for 30 years, and when we started our careers together, we were working for a highly reputable company that focused on high quality engineering services,” he told Australian Mining.
“What we have seen through the evolution of companies getting bigger and acquiring other companies, is they typically become very corporatised and the measuring stick often becomes about money.
“Our focus, on the other hand, is always on our people, culture and clients, and then the money comes next. If you get those things right, then the rest looks after itself.”
Bloxham said Agilitus’ key point of difference is that its service quality consistently meets or exceeds client expectations.
This, as Bloxham attests, is increasingly becoming a rarity.
“Fairly routinely the feedback we get from clients is the quality of engineering they get from competing organisations, particularly EPCMs (engineering, procurement, and construction management providers), isn’t up to scratch,” he said.
“This is because they’re primarily focused on the delivery of services, potentially to the detriment of the engineering effort.”
Engineering is a critical foundation to any mining operation, and the specialised nature of this field of expertise means no such service provider can cut corners.
“Any person who’s worked on projects most of their lives understands the criticality of getting engineering right,” Bloxham said. “Engineering is complex, and the quality of engineering has a big impact on the risk profile of a project, your capital costs, and your asset performance.
“If you get your engineering right, and most clients are smart enough to prioritise this, then it becomes a point of difference.”
Agilitus provides engineering services for both greenfield and brownfield developments, with the company primarily focused on one key market across multiple sectors.
“Because we want to specialise in engineering and provide high quality services, we have targeted what’s called sustaining capital services, which is a lot of work in brownfield environments,” Bloxham said.
“This is a complex field of engineering where a client might have existing processing facilities, refineries or energy plants that require improvements or refurbishment.
“Sustaining capital services makes up about 70 per cent of our revenue, and our clients love it, because many bigger companies, which are primarily focused on greenfields projects, have lost the skill set to successfully compete with us in this field.”
Bloxham discussed a recent client interaction to further validate his point.
“I recently held a meeting with a vice president of an oil and gas company, who is responsible for a major operation in Western Australia,” he said.
“He asked me, ‘What do you do, Craig?’, and I said, ‘We specialise in high quality engineering services to assist with sustaining capital’. He then said, ‘That’s exactly what I want’.”
“A lot of Tier 1 players in the resources industry have ageing assets they are looking to either extend or reinvigorate, particularly in the iron ore industry,” Bloxham said. “This is where Agilitus can be of service.”
Agilitus provides engineering services to a range of industries by being a technology integrator, which feeds into its sustaining capital services business.
“We have a client exploring the possibility of producing a high-value critical mineral as a by-product of their refinery process,” Bloxham said.
“While this is a new project on the surface, the technology for this already exists, and the client needed an engineering partner to help them integrate that technology. So they turned to us.
“Sure, integrating more technology onto an existing plant increases its complexity, but that’s our bread and butter.”
Through its inspired engineering methodology where people and culture come first, Agilitus is becoming an increasingly prominent name in the resources industry.
The company has a significant role to play as sectors evolve, and technology adoption becomes more sophisticated and intricate.
This article appeared in the October issue of Australian Mining magazine.