Frank Attard appreciates how valuable a crystal ball would be to unlock the future.

But at the same time, he is a man who diversifies whenever an opportunity presents itself. And that is what Frank, Managing Director of Key Solutions Group, did, because he wasn’t going to be left behind.

Key Solutions Group is an engineering service company, based in Paget. The company started 18 years ago and was comprised of mainly engineers, fast forward and they have grown in different areas, from electrical, civil-construction and mechanical to maintenance across the mining and sugar industries.

When it comes to diversification across industry and business Frank says you must listen and take on board what your clients are saying and find the opportunity.

“We’ve been proactive in trying to take on different things, I suppose, and try and be a little bit of a lead.

“I’m not saying that we are the leaders, other companies out there doing great stuff, but yeah, I guess just trying to get ourselves out there and hoping one thing leads to another.

  “We started off with 3D printing for prototyping then we got into laser scanning. So, we bought more laser scanners. So, I think we’ve got four or five now and then obviously everyone’s got the buzzword about AI.”

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For Frank part of the challenge as our region’s industries continue to move towards the horizon of diversification is the rate at which it is happening.

He said it would be crazy to think that what we did 20 years ago is going to work  20 years into the future.

“It’s like anything, it’s all right to have all the technology but you need to have good people.

“People that you know can understand and drive the technology.”

Frank said we will still need our traditional tradespeople to fit the workforce, but there will be trade X roles that are yet to be thought of let alone a tangible resource.

“We don’t know what trades we going to need”

But one thing Frank is certain of is it will continue to evolve because industry has no plans to slow down.

Along with keeping up with technology one of the challenges is finding the right people, whether it is to train or to upskill.

Frank said many industries are coming into a labour shortage, something that was predicted more than ten years ago.

“Labor would be our number one challenge, and it’s only got worse. We didn’t think it would, but it has.

“Believe it or not.

“It’s like a game of chess as far as having the right people in the right positions at the right time to take on all that extra work – but to  have the  knowledge and skills.”

One-way Key Solutions Group is upskilling some of the 100 people who work for the company is implementing a suite of welding robots to their workshops.

The robots will look after the repetitive tasks, freeing up the tradespeople in the workshop to use their skills for more specialised tasks, across fabrication and welding.

Fank said it will be able tackle mass production more efficiently, with the capability to do more than 50-100 items at a time, which is where a very large workload resides.

Part of the ethos of Key Solutions Group is making the investments to start their diversification journey, from solar to robots, but the key is to weigh up the balance between risk and reward.

“The only thing you can do is look at what you can control.

“You can only learn what not to do from your mistakes and then put the time into what you knows works and it will eventually work out – I always say persistence-beats resistance.”

Frank said you must be open to change, start an evolution within yourself and be open to what is out there.

“If it was easy, everyone would be doing it,” he said.