Heritage & Partnerships

Every major development in Australia is built on someone's Country. The heritage decisions, the partnership structures, and the agreements that shape how it proceeds are among the most consequential an organisation and a Traditional Owner group will ever make together.

Too often they are made too late, treated as compliance, held separate from the capital and operational decisions that actually shape what happens on the ground.

We advise the companies building on Country and the Traditional Owner groups whose Country it is.

How we help

Heritage strategy

We work with organisations to embed heritage as a strategic input across the operating model and the investment portfolio, integrated with capital and operational decisions from the start.

Approvals pathways

We advise where cultural heritage, native title, and environmental obligations converge. It is some of the most complex regulatory ground in the country.

Partnership design

We design structures that define decision rights, accountability, and commercial participation across the life of an asset. Governance arrangements, not consultation theatre.

Co-management

We build frameworks between proponents and Traditional Owner groups that hold across decades, not just through the next investment gate.

Traditional Owner economic development

We advise Traditional Owner groups on evaluating what is proposed for their Country, structuring ownership, and building the governance to participate commercially.

Co-management Framework, A$2.7B

A major resource development needed to progress through investment gates while establishing a genuine partnership with Traditional Owners. We designed the first nationally recognised co-management framework between the mining company and Traditional Owner groups. The development progressed through three investment gates with zero heritage-related delays, and the framework became the reference model for subsequent developments across the region.

Indigenous Engagement Governance

A global mining major had no enterprise-level governance connecting Indigenous engagement across nine Traditional Owner groups. Site teams operated independently. Executive oversight was disconnected. We designed and embedded the governance structure that connected them for the first time, reducing heritage-related project delays across the portfolio by approximately 40 per cent.

Traditional Owner Economic Development, Multi-sector

Traditional Owner groups were receiving royalties but had limited structures to participate as economic partners in developments on their Country. We advised on the commercial development of assets in energy, water, mining, and critical minerals, and designed ownership structures and co-management agreements that gave Traditional Owners governance and commercial standing across multiple developments.