Being There Matters: How Firsthand Experience Shapes Great E&C Outsourcing

Experience shapes us. That’s a big fact of life—so what does it mean for Cybalink? Cybalink co-founder Kim Lombardi knows engineering and construction firsthand—and believes that experience shapes everything that gives Cybalink its outsourcing edge.

“I started out 18 years ago at Sons of Gwalia. Being sent onsite was a total baptism by fire. I really grew up there, because I had to. Then I moved to Monadelphous. It was a long time ago—I remember being the first woman manager in my division”.

“We did it tough back then, we learnt and made some mistakes. We were measuring success by hours clocked at desks. We relied on manual systems and a patchwork of sticky notes. I could understand where that came from, but after moving into an innovation role, I could see that there were better ways”.

Kim describes three key insights that shape Cybalink:

“When you work away from home—whether it’s FIFO or just remote—it’s demanding. You miss family and normal life. But something happens between people onsite. A bond grows. You rely on each other and make your own fun together—from improvised summer Olympics to outdoor movie nights, it’s all about camaraderie. You’re just in it together”.

Kim sees that same spirit in her teams at Cybalink. “Our people work as an extension of a client’s culture—just like they would onsite”.

Recreating a feeling of camaraderie is the cornerstone of Cybalink’s approach—and means building long-term and meaningful partnerships with clients.

Being in it together is an ethos that runs through Cybalink’s culture. “We create alignment, we build a shared path forward—so our teams are absolutely in it together with our clients”.

To outsiders—like normal outsourcing companies—the sheer scale of the engineering and construction sector is hard to fathom, says Kim.

“The magnitude is epic. The teams are mammoth. We’re talking about maybe supplying the minerals that run entire nations. The coordination and logistics work on a scale that normal HR and outsourcing just can’t compute”.

When you have national recruiting experience like Kim—mobilising over 2,000 people a month—you know that from the macro to the micro, coordination and logistics is everything.

“We think like frontline people to understand the urgency of client needs”, says Kim. “If they need an estimator tomorrow, we have to be responsive enough to deliver on that”.

Other companies like to hide behind red tape and SLAs. Cybalink doesn’t. They’ve built their structure as flat as possible to avoid bureaucracy and get the job done. As Kim says, “We need to be flexible enough to respond quickly and think on our feet”.

For Cybalink, that translates into an ironclad commitment to delivery. “We aim to deliver 100% on every promise, on every timeline. And if the slightest change becomes inevitable, we communicate.”

The spirit of ‘Just do it’ is nurtured in Cybalink’s teams, who understand when to challenge—and how to innovate. Their global experience means they know how to take initiative and leverage their expertise—from the idea sessions to the big decisions.

“Our clients don’t want robots,” says Kim, “They want innovators—they want team members who add real value and deliver what they promise—and that’s our promise to clients”.