The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) initiated its Anti-Dumping Reform Program to implement the then Government’s direction to build a more robust anti-dumping administration with a defined corporate identity and elevated profile.  

The Anti-Dumping Reform Program included the most sustained and complex policy and legislative development executed by the ACBPS, and required extensive inter-divisional, inter-agency and industry collaboration.  

Key objectives were to establish the Anti-Dumping Commission as a statutory agency, establish its headquarters in Melbourne and implement a range of Government recommendations and new legislation to strengthen Australia’s anti-dumping system. 

Within months of establishing the Commission, it was transferred to the then Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (now Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources) which required substantial changes to legislative processes, business processes and agency integration. 

These activities commenced in 2012 and concluded in 2014.  

Delivering the project 

CAPDA Consulting was engaged to provide a range of services to assist delivery of the program. It worked with the ACBPS team and senior executive to define change requirements and an appropriate delivery framework for the scale and timeframe of the program. CAPDA Consulting also guided change management principles, organisational design thinking and workforce management. 

Part of CAPDA Consulting’s role involved coordinating resources from within the project team and across the ACBPS. This included responsibility for project scheduling, governance and reporting, risk management, communications, process definition, and change management.  

Outcomes and value 

The project and change management services provided enabled a complex set of deliverables and impacts to be delivered within the Government’s announced timeframe. Key deliverables included: 

• the Anti-Dumping Commission was operational in its new Melbourne Headquarters by the required date 

• changes to operational processes arising from government recommendations and three tranches of streamlining legislation were made operational 

• the Anti-Dumping Review Panel was set up to provide an independent administrative appeal mechanism. 

The project was awarded the Australian Institute of Project Management’s (AIPM) National Project Management Achievement Award in 2014 for an ‘Organisation Change Management Project’.  

*Now Australian Border Force