Partners & Projects
These projects highlight how Gunggandji Aerospace applies technical expertise, operational knowledge, and practical problem solving across Defence, aviation, aerospace, research, and other complex operating environments. While every engagement is different, together they demonstrate the breadth of capability and experience we bring to our clients.
Capability demonstrated through successful delivery
Rotary Workforce Strategy for Defence Capability with Boeing
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Gunggandji Aerospace supported Boeing on workforce strategy and transition planning for Australia’s changing Defence rotary aviation capability, helping define the workforce challenges associated with introducing Apache and Black Hawk helicopters while transitioning the ARH Tiger and MRH Taipan fleets.
The project focused on a complex Defence capability challenge. Introducing new aircraft and transitioning legacy fleets requires more than technical platform decisions. It also requires a clear understanding of future workforce requirements, technical maintenance capability, skills availability, safety, fleet decommissioning, transition pathways, and the long-term workforce needed to sustain capability.
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Gunggandji Aerospace helped define and qualify the workforce problem, assess future capability requirements, and develop practical workforce strategies and capability solutions for the Commonwealth.
This included mapping Australia’s training pipeline and assessing its capacity against forecast workforce demand to understand the technical workforce that could realistically be developed, and within what timeframe. The work connected workforce planning and transition strategy with technical maintenance requirements, safety, responsible decommissioning, skills requirements, and the development lead times needed to build a future workforce capable of sustaining Defence rotary capability.
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By bringing these interdependencies together, Gunggandji Aerospace identified where the technical workforce required for future rotary capability could not be developed through Australia’s training pipeline within the timeframe required. This allowed workforce constraints and development lead times to be factored into the broader capability transition, informing practical strategies that balanced workforce availability with technical maintenance requirements, transition timing, safety and responsible decommissioning.
Together, these strategies helped build the workforce foundations for Defence’s changing rotary fleet, maintaining readiness and operational continuity through transition and strengthening the technical maintenance capability needed to sustain future operations.
Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) Change Management at Melbourne Airport
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Gunggandji Aerospace supported the Melbourne Airport Airfield Renaming Project through ORAT Change Management, helping plan the safe transition of taxiway and apron taxi lane naming into live airport operations. This was a safety-critical operational change program required to prepare Melbourne Airport for future growth, new taxiway flows, and increased aircraft movements.
The project formed part of Melbourne Airport’s long term airfield development, including major infrastructure change, preparation for the Melbourne Third Runway, and future parallel runway operations. This was not a simple naming exercise. In a live airport environment, taxiway and apron taxi lane identifiers affect how pilots, air traffic control, airport operations, ground handlers, emergency services, and other airside users understand, communicate, and move across the airfield. Clear, compliant, and logical identification is essential to safe movement, operational continuity, and stakeholder confidence.
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Gunggandji Aerospace led the project through scoping, planning, and launch, shaping a practical delivery pathway for one of the most operationally sensitive forms of airport change, embedding a new operational framework across the systems, documentation, procedures, and stakeholder behaviours that support safe movement across a live airfield.
The work required deep technical knowledge of aerodrome and airfield systems and operations, ORAT Change Management expertise, operational risk awareness, and stakeholder coordination. This included stakeholder engagement, documentation and system update planning, communications, training impacts, implementation staging, and changeover readiness. It also required a clear understanding of the practical requirements of multiple organisations operating across the airfield, including airport operations, airlines, groundhandlers, emergency services, air traffic control, and regulatory stakeholders.
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For Gunggandji Aerospace, the project demonstrates our ability to manage complex, safety-critical aviation change where technical systems, compliance, operational continuity, stakeholder readiness, and disciplined implementation are critical to success.
By combining technical airfield knowledge with practical delivery discipline, Gunggandji Aerospace helped reduce implementation risk and support the safe operational transition required for future airport infrastructure, while maintaining operational continuity and ensuring stakeholders remained clear, coordinated, and ready for what comes next.
Gunggandji Aerospace Operations Centre
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Gunggandji Aerospace is providing, mobilising and managing the operations room workforce for the SPARAS Operations Centre at Adelaide Airport, managing day-to-day operations within a critical emergency aviation service supporting South Australia’s police, ambulance and rescue aviation services. The service is operated by Toll Aviation.
The operations centre supports critical day-to-day operations for State Police, Ambulance, and Rescue Aviation Services across South Australia, forming part of the South Australian Government’s $870 million investment in new fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. The centre is currently in mobilisation, with hiring and training underway ahead of operations commencing in February 2027.
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Gunggandji Aerospace’s role on SPARAS demonstrates its ability to mobilise and prepare a workforce and manage operationally critical functions within an emergency aviation service, including task coordination, flight following, reporting and stakeholder liaison. Operating within a service delivered by Toll Aviation, the role requires workforce readiness, governance, service continuity and stakeholder coordination to be integrated with the reliability and discipline essential services require.
The project also creates practical aviation employment opportunities for First Nations South Australians, with Indigenous employment embedded into the delivery model rather than treated as a separate initiative. Gunggandji Aerospace’s low barrier entry model starts with a practical question: what can someone contribute on day one, and how do we build capability from there? With the right support, supervision, and exposure, foundational operational tasks can become the starting point for long-term aviation capability, strengthening workforce resilience across the critical services communities rely on.
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Gunggandji Aerospace’s Managing Director, Daniel Joinbee, reflects on the broader significance for Australians: “This partnership is not just about participation. It’s about building real operational capability in people, giving them the confidence, judgement, and technical understanding to work within the environment, meet the standard required, and grow into roles that support critical services. When First Nations people are part of that capability, the value is bigger than employment alone. It strengthens families and communities, while building the workforce depth Australia needs to sustain the critical aviation services the public relies on into the future.”
For Gunggandji Aerospace, SPARAS demonstrates how workforce capability, operational readiness, and meaningful Indigenous participation can be integrated into the delivery of critical aviation services. By building the people, systems, and delivery model together, the project strengthens operational capability while creating practical pathways for First Nations people into Australia’s aviation workforce.
Turning Applied Research into Operational Capability
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Gunggandji Aerospace is supporting Curtin University and AuScope on the Universal Remote Platform, an applied technology development initiative exploring how standardised, modular infrastructure can support research operations in remote Australian environments.
Remote research infrastructure is often constrained by distance, access, workforce availability, operating conditions, and the cost of sustaining equipment across dispersed sites. A universal platform has the potential to make remote sensing and field-based research more scalable, adaptable, and efficient across different scientific applications. For that potential to translate into real-world use, the technical concept needs to be matched with an operating model built for remote research environments, and capable of working across research users, community partners, and future service models.
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Gunggandji Aerospace is helping shape the operating model for the Universal Remote Platform, considering how the platform could be governed, supported, staffed, deployed, and sustained in real conditions.
The work brings operational reality into the development process early, including remote operations requirements, Indigenous community engagement, workforce pathways, operations room concepts, stakeholder engagement, safety and risk considerations, deployment planning, and long-term sustainment.
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For Gunggandji Aerospace, the Curtin / AuScope project demonstrates our ability to support applied technology development where research, infrastructure, operating models, and stakeholder confidence need to come together.
By supporting the operational layer around the technology, we are helping create a pathway for remote research infrastructure to move from feasibility and preliminary design toward scalable, commercially viable, and sustained use.
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