50 Years of Deadly: Building on Country together

As NAIDOC Week marks its 50th anniversary, RLB reflects on what it means to build with, not just on, Country.

This year, National NAIDOC Week (5–12 July 2026) carries a milestone theme: 50 Years of Deadly. It marks five decades of a movement that began as a platform for truth-telling and has grown into a national celebration of the oldest continuous living cultures on earth.

For RLB, an organisation whose work begins with the land, every project we cost, plan and deliver sits on Country that has been cared for by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for more than 65,000 years. That reality makes this milestone a moment for both reflection and recognition, and an opportunity to consider our own responsibilities.

That reflection has taken a formal shape this year. RLB recently launched its inaugural Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), endorsed by Reconciliation Australia, setting out the first deliberate steps in what the firm describes as a long-term reconciliation journey rather than a single initiative.

“Reconciliation is not a process to be rushed,” says Jamie Smith, RLB Director and the firm’s RAP Champion. “We are using this Reflect RAP process to enhance our cultural competency and create culturally safe workplaces, learning, unlearning and building collaborative and meaningful relationships with First Nations people.”

Construction’s stake in reconciliation

As part of Australia’s property and construction industry – a sector that collectively employs around 10% of the national workforce – RLB is acutely aware that every project it touches is built on land nurtured by First Nations peoples for millennia.

That awareness sits behind the firm’s four values of Truth, Trust, Together and Tomorrow, which Jamie says are echoed rather than replaced by the new RAP. “Our plan is not a set of initiatives, but rather echoes our values,” he says. “We acknowledge the rich cultural heritages of Australia’s First Nations Peoples and the importance of reconciliation to strengthen communities and create vibrant spaces.”

RLB’s offices already sit on Country from Gimuy and Yidinji land in Cairns to Larrakia Country in Darwin, Boorloo Country in Perth and Warrang Country in Sydney. The RAP commits the firm to deepening staff understanding of the Traditional Owners and Custodians connected to each of these operational areas, and to embedding Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Country protocols more consistently across the business.

Lessons already on the ground

RLB doesn’t have to look far for examples of what genuine collaboration with First Nations communities can achieve. In Yarrabah, Far North Queensland, RLB provided cost management and quantity surveying services for the Gurriny Yealamucka Health and Wellbeing Centre – a project shaped from the outset by the Gunggandji peoples, whose words give the centre its name: “good healing waters”.

From the landscape design to the façade artwork and the appointment of the building contractor, the project was shaped through collaboration with the First Nations people of Yarrabah. The result is a modern and culturally appropriate health facility that reflects the needs, culture and aspirations of the Yarrabah community.

The project’s First Nations building contractor, HC Building and Construction, engaged local trainees and Indigenous suppliers and sub-contractors, directing 8.7% of the construction budget – almost $220,000 – to Indigenous-owned businesses. This is the kind of outcome RLB’s RAP now seeks to make less the exception and more the norm: the plan commits the firm to investigating Supply Nation membership and identifying procurement opportunities with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned businesses across all of its regions, not only where a project brief happens to call for it.

Read our Perspective article, Connecting with Country, to learn more about the Gurriny Yealamucka Health and Wellbeing Centre.

Turning intent into action

The Reflect RAP translates that intent into a series of concrete, time-bound commitments across the program’s three pillars of Relationships, Respect and Opportunities, underpinned by governance. Among them, RLB will identify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders and organisations within its sphere of influence, build relationships through National Reconciliation Week, and review its HR policies for anti-discrimination provisions. Staff will be supported to better understand the purpose of cultural protocols, and the firm will conduct a review of cultural learning needs across the organisation.

On opportunity, the commitments are squarely about pathways: developing routes into employment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, building understanding of current staffing to inform future professional development, and exploring procurement from First Nations-owned businesses.

Jamie frames the long-term ambition simply: to inspire and create opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to embrace careers in quantity surveying and programming, helping to build the future of Australia from within the industry that shapes it.

Marking the moment

This NAIDOC Week, RLB’s RAP Working Group, comprising senior leaders from each Australian region, will take part in external NAIDOC Week events, and staff across the business will be encouraged to learn about the significance of 50 Years of Deadly. It is a theme that honours fifty years of First Nations leadership, resilience and creativity that has challenged the nation to listen, reckon and act.

For RLB, that challenge extends well beyond one week of recognition.

“Our responsibility is not simply to acknowledge that, but to build relationships with First Nations peoples that help us design and deliver places in ways that respect culture, create opportunity and leave a positive legacy. That’s what building with, not just on Country, looks like in practice,” Jamie concludes.