PwC Australia had won a major technology project with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to deliver the largest ever cloud migration for a Government Partner. This was publicly known as the 2021 Australian Census, a survey capturing the data of over 25 million residents to provide a snapshot of the country’s demographics. With data breaches on the rise, and a past Census failure making headlines in 2016, data security and reliable delivery was critical to this project.
PwC reached out to Evolution due to our experience in a similar sized project with the NBN, engaging us at the start of the journey in 2019 to leverage our expertise in finding the right contractors for the project. As a critical Government project, details were kept under strict NDA, meaning only Australian Citizens with security clearance could work on it. The scale and high public profile of the project meant deadlines were fixed with no option for late delivery.
This was a challenging project for everyone involved – the importance of success and the jeopardy for failure was enormous.
The process began by gaining a detailed understanding of the project, the tech and what PwC were trying to deliver. As a confidential project, we were only able to access limited information, which highlighted the importance of scoping out the project from a technical perspective from end-to-end, through several phases. We worked with PwC to understand the scale, the project lifecycle, the skillsets required, including when and why each was important.
Our initial placements were in the Project Management and Business Analyst space to provide a thorough scope of the functional requirements, followed by Tech Leads and Architects to build the technical specs. Knowing they were going to need developers shortly thereafter, we started to build a pipeline of Software Engineers in preparation. This process was repeated for all subsequent phases which increased the scope to include Automation Testers and DevOps Engineers. Being able to pipeline candidates in advance for the different phases of the project was a key part of our success in delivery.
There was a significant amount of legacy technology involved, especially in the early stages, so sourcing candidates with the right skillsets as well as Security Clearance was a major challenge. On top of that, the project was confidential, and many candidates were sent ‘into the dark’ for their first interview. It meant we had to articulate the big picture, the benefits and growth potential without providing the end goal. Of several recruitment companies engaged on this project, Evolution tackled those challenges most effectively, placing the most candidates.
Considering the requirements and previous history, the odds were against us, but our strategic partnership allowed us to successfully deliver this project on time in August 2021. During this two-year journey, we were able to identify, aattract and engage the volume of skilled people required for PwC to deliver the project successfully.
It was a true partnership where we could rely on them to engage with us, and they could rely on us to deliver. This made us one of PwC’s most trusted partners and we have continued to work with them since.
