About Us | Dawsons

Sharon, Brad and Damo at Cannington Port

Established in 1987 by Keith and Valerie Dawson, the business has grown to become one of Queensland's largest privately held multi-disciplinary industrial services companies. Now operating from workshops in Cairns, Townsville and Mt Isa and employing over 2000 people each year, Dawsons is still guided by family values and maintains a steadfast focus on safety, quality and reliability.

At Dawsons, it's all about being smart, reliable, and responsive to our client needs, while continuing to innovate and grow. Our clients and projects range in size and are mainly in the Mining, Marine, Power, Sugar, Defence, Government, and Process sectors. Over the past 30 years, we have built our reputation on providing exceptional service and remaining focused on building long term, value driven relationships with our clients.

The Dawsons Difference

What makes Dawsons stand out from the rest?

We Care

Dawsons is big enough to do the job and small enough to care. We pride ourselves on our ability to maintain long term value driven partnerships with clients.

Our People

The Dawson's culture is one of success, hard work and pride. Dawsons staff are passionate about the projects undertaken and the team spirit is clearly visible when you walk into an office or worksite.

Proven Success

Dawsons has over 30 years' experience supplying labour hire support to clients in industry. We are experienced in the management of services to vast geographic areas and to complex client structures.

Our Technology

We use a proprietary software system called TRON to manage our employee database and the compliance of safety, qualification, skills, performance and health of all current and past employees. Providing us with an industry leading tool to manage our manning requirements.

Diversified

Dawsons is unique in its structure as a fully integrated Heavy Engineering and Labour Hire company and our strength and commercial competitive advantage lies in our own ability to leverage off the different divisions within our business. Our status as a Heavy Engineering company has underpinned our ability to attract the best quality employees. We also have the ability to upskill and train workers – our Labour Hire division utilizes our internal training facilities to ensure employees have the most up to date qualifications.

Safety

Dawsons places the health and safety of its people as a core operating value. Dawsons has developed a Safety Management System that addresses the risks of our business and ensures our workers are safe when on a client's site. All employees are required to have a minimum level of training prior to commencing work.

Our Leadership

Dawsons Group of Companies has grown from a partnership between Keith and Valerie Dawson to now being a major regional employer, successfully completing multi-million dollar value projects. The strength and capacity of the Dawsons Group means that we are big enough to complete the big jobs; our family values mean that we are still small enough to care.

We are very fortunate to have had many fantastic people on the journey with us over many years in business. Our leadership team is small, we don't hang on to titles or particularly enjoy talking about ourselves, this is how we roll.

Sharon Dawson

Chief Executive Officer, Director

Starting to learn the ropes in the family business in 1999, Sharon's introduction to Dawsons was via the Labour Hire Department (having successfully convinced her father that she didn't need to complete a Diesel Fitting apprenticeship). She still gets a kick out of getting exactly the right person for the role but these days, she is responsible for all client facing activities and loves the challenge of working out custom solutions for Dawsons clients. Outside of work and sometimes at work, she is actively competing to be the best mum ever – well that's what she tells her four kids. Passionate about regional development, she has enjoyed varying roles with Cairns Chamber of Commerce, Advance Cairns, Ports North and Racing Queensland.

Lloyd Everist

Chief Operating Officer

Lloyd makes it happen. When Lloyd joined Dawsons in 1997, he was a fresh faced Contracts Manager, formerly Boilermaker at NQEA. Not so fresh faced any more, Lloyd has been integral to the growth of Dawsons, supporting the promises made by Sharon with the technical knowledge, business processes, anally retentive attention to detail and general “whatever it takes” to deliver heavy engineering, maintenance and construction projects to our clients. Lloyd has many talents, but despite his dedication, has so far failed to win an elite squash tournament.

John Sainsbury

Chief Financial Officer

John started with Dawsons way back in 2002, having enjoyed stints in Western Australia, Western Queensland and the Western Highlands of PNG. In addition to providing commercial and contractual acumen, John has been the brains behind TRON, the brains behind Dawsons. TRON is Dawsons' custom built enterprise resource management software, providing us with an industry leading management tool for all aspects of our business. These days John is a little bit country.

Damien Girgenti

General Manager

Damien (aka Damo) is the cool operator, calmly managing Dawsons operations in Mt Isa, South Australia, Dawsons Relines and whatever else we need him to pick up across the business. Arriving in Cairns from Victoria Mill in Ingham in 2005, Damien applied for work at Dawsons, hoping to get the opportunity to work in the mining industry. After a couple of years with the Dawsons crew at Groote Eylandt, Damien moved into a workshop facilitator, then quickly after that he progressed into the General Manager role.

In The Community

We take pride in giving back to our community whenever we can, and are proud to support and work with many local organisations and causes. The following are just a few of the groups that we are honoured to support: