Aboriginal Business Engagement Forum, a rail led prototype for genuine engagement.
A pilot designed to shift major infrastructure engagement from compliance reporting toward visible capability, genuine relationship, and accountable outcomes. The forum brings Aboriginal businesses, project leaders, procurement representatives, and delivery partners into one room, with the explicit intent that listening translates into action.
Led by Richard Young
Richard is a recognised strategic authority in Aboriginal engagement across major infrastructure, and brings sector-leading depth in moving beyond transactional procurement toward genuine, relational, and accountable practice. He has shaped some of the most influential thinking in the field on how projects translate Aboriginal voice into operational change, and he is the thought and delivery leader for this session. The design choices, the integrity of the engagement model, and the translation of insight into project-level action sit under his stewardship, ensuring the forum stands up to the policy, Treaty, and Closing the Gap context it is being built within.
Why this forum, and why now
Rail Projects Victoria and VIDA Rail are exploring a rail-led Aboriginal engagement initiative connected to the Sunshine Superhub project. The initiative is positioned as an early prototype, focused on improving how major infrastructure projects engage Aboriginal businesses and communities through more transparent, accountable, and relationship-based approaches.
The work sits within a broader policy and accountability context, including increased scrutiny around social procurement outcomes, evolving Treaty and Federal Government policy settings, growing verification expectations around Aboriginal business participation, concerns regarding the transparency and legitimacy of current procurement and reporting practices, and rising expectations for measurable contribution toward Closing the Gap outcomes.
Existing procurement reporting often focuses on total spend, labour hours, and target compliance. This can unintentionally incentivise transactional engagement, concentration of spend within joint ventures, limited benefit flowing to genuinely Aboriginal-owned businesses, and reduced transparency regarding where money ultimately goes.
The shift the forum is trying to make
Four interconnected objectives
The engagement is designed to bring together Aboriginal businesses, project leaders, procurement representatives, and delivery partners. The session will hear directly from mob, increase awareness of local capability, challenge myths and assumptions about Aboriginal business capacity, strengthen relationships and understanding, explore practical barriers to participation, and translate insights into project-level action and accountability. Outputs may also contribute toward future impact reporting requirements for Government stakeholders, including the Minister for Infrastructure.
Increase awareness of Aboriginal capability
Make visible the breadth, sophistication, and diversity of Aboriginal businesses operating locally and across the infrastructure sector. Surface services offered, local presence, delivery experience, partnership opportunities, and workforce and cultural strengths.
Improve the quality and authenticity of engagement
Move beyond transactional procurement toward genuine, ongoing, culturally respectful models. Engage directly with Aboriginal businesses rather than speaking on their behalf, reduce reliance on intermediaries, and improve verification and transparency.
Support more meaningful accountability
Current KRAs are raising accountability expectations, yet spend data alone is insufficient. Explore broader measures of success, including who is genuinely benefiting, how partnerships are structured, supply chain integrity, continuity of engagement, and contribution toward Closing the Gap aspirations.
Translate listening into action
The second half of the forum centres on leadership reflection, systems and procurement discussion, identification of barriers, examination of project opportunities, and practical commitments. The session is designed to create operational and strategic movement, not stay conversational.
How Opposite can support
Opposite is a human-centred design and organisational psychology consultancy, and our role here is one of support. Richard leads the engagement and holds the relational and strategic centre of the session. We sit alongside him to help facilitate, organise, and run the forum, designing the activities, structuring the conversation, holding the room, and capturing what is said in ways that preserve its integrity.
The intent is straightforward. Aboriginal businesses are heard accurately, project leaders and procurement representatives leave with clear, named actions, and the forum produces artefacts and decisions that continue to do work after the day itself. We bring the design and facilitation craft so that Richard and the people in the room can focus on the conversation that matters.
Critically, the role is not to reinterpret or dilute Aboriginal voices. It is to support accurate capture, preserve the integrity of meaning, synthesise themes responsibly, and help leadership teams translate what they hear into operational and strategic movement.
Forum Design and Facilitation Support
Light touch. Opposite will support the design and delivery of the forum itself, working closely with Richard on the day and around it.
This option is built for the scenario where the relationships are already strong, the engagement strategy is in good shape, and what is needed is a well-designed, well-run session that converts a day of conversation into a clear set of commitments. Opposite's role will be concentrated around the forum itself, helping Richard shape the structure, design the activities, hold the room, and translate what is said into something leaders can act on.
What we will do
We will begin with two co-design sessions with Richard and a small group of key stakeholders, working through the intent of the day, the audience, and the shape of the conversation. The first session will set direction and surface the questions the forum needs to answer. The second will pressure-test the design, lock in the activities, and confirm the shape of the second-half leadership and action session, which is the part that will ask senior people in the room to make commitments rather than observations.
From there we will develop the facilitation plan and the activities that sit inside each segment. On the day, we will provide facilitation support alongside Richard, capture insights in real time, and feed playback back into the room so that leaders can see and respond to what is emerging while it is still live. After the forum, we will hand back a tight synthesis of what was said and what was decided.
What you will receive
- Two facilitated co-design sessions with Richard and key stakeholders
- A forum facilitation plan, including timing, flow, and activity design
- The workshop tools and prompts used on the day
- A leadership action framework capturing commitments and owners
- A summary insights document drawn from the session
Best fit when
- Existing relationships with Aboriginal businesses are already established and trusted
- The primary focus is on running an excellent forum, not building a body of evidence around it
- Timelines are tight and the work needs to mobilise quickly
Pre-Engagement, Capability Mapping and Forum Delivery
End-to-end. Pair pre-engagement insight gathering with forum delivery and post-forum translation, producing evidence and artefacts that continue to do work after the day itself.
This option recognises that the forum will be most powerful when it sits inside a longer arc. The work will begin before the day, with direct engagement that surfaces capability, barriers, and opportunities. It will be shaped on the day, with a forum designed around what has actually been heard. And it will continue after the day, translating conversation into commitments, artefacts, and a roadmap that leadership teams can hold themselves accountable to. The recommendation here is driven by what the brief is asking for, namely a shift from compliance-style reporting toward genuine engagement, visible capability, and measurable outcomes. That shift is hard to produce from the forum alone.
Phase 1, Co-Design
Three sessions to set direction, shape the work, and lock in the forum design.
We will begin with three co-design sessions with Richard and a small group of key stakeholders. The first session will set the strategic intent of the work, agree the audience, and frame the questions the engagement needs to answer. The second will shape the pre-engagement and capability mapping approach, including how Aboriginal businesses will be invited into the conversation and how the ecosystem view will be built. The third will pressure-test the forum design itself, lock in the activities, and confirm the shape of the second-half leadership and action session.
Phase 2, Pre-Engagement
Building a real picture of the ecosystem before the forum begins.
We will spend time with Aboriginal businesses through direct conversations and interviews, listening to what they do, how they want to be engaged, and where the friction sits in current procurement and engagement practice. In parallel, we will speak with project stakeholders on the rail side to understand the operational realities, the procurement constraints, and the assumptions that have built up over time. The output of this phase will be a much sharper sense of where the gaps are between what mob are offering and what projects are actually seeing.
Phase 3, Capability Mapping
Making Aboriginal business capability visible, navigable, and credible.
We will translate what we hear into a structured view of the local Aboriginal business ecosystem. This will include capability summaries, sector and service categorisation, and a visual capability landscape that project teams can actually use. We will map this against the project's own lifecycle, showing where opportunities for engagement sit at each stage of delivery. The mapping is not a directory exercise. It will be a deliberate counterweight to the assumption that local Aboriginal businesses do not exist or cannot deliver at scale.
Phase 4, Forum Delivery
A session designed around what has already been heard.
The forum will be much sharper for being built on a foundation of real engagement. We will design the day to include a facilitated capability showcase, activities that surface and dismantle persistent myths about Aboriginal business capacity, and a systems mapping exercise that exposes where procurement and engagement practice are creating barriers. The second half of the forum will shift the room from listening to deciding, with leadership translation workshops and action-planning exercises that ask senior people to make named, owned commitments.
Phase 5, Playback and Reporting
Turning a day of conversation into operational and strategic movement.
After the forum, we will synthesise what was said and what was committed to into a strategic findings summary, an opportunities and barriers map, and a recommended set of next actions. This material will be designed to support both internal accountability and the impact reporting expectations that the brief acknowledges, including reporting to the Minister for Infrastructure.
What you will receive
- Three facilitated co-design sessions with Richard and key stakeholders
- An Aboriginal capability catalogue and menu for the local ecosystem
- A visual ecosystem map tied to the project lifecycle
- A pre-forum insight summary, drawn from direct engagement
- Forum playback materials, including real-time synthesis
- An action roadmap with named commitments and owners
- A leadership summary report suitable for internal and Government reporting
Best fit when
- The project is seeking genuine operational change, not a well-run event in isolation
- Leadership teams need a deeper understanding of the ecosystem they are operating in
- The work needs to produce evidence, artefacts, and accountability that outlast the forum day
- Impact reporting expectations to Government stakeholders are a meaningful factor