A Bechtel spokesperson confirmed to ENB that the figure of 150 redundancies revealed in a recent press report was correct.

The engineering giant’s Gladstone general manager Kevin Berg said construction work, by its very nature, had a clear finish date.

“We will see a growing number of people demobilising as we go through commissioning and startup of each of the six trains being built on Curtis Island,” he said.

“We currently have about 14,000 people working across the three projects and that number will reduce gradually throughout 2015 and 2016 when all six trains are completed.”

Berg said people were aware of their project finish date when recruited.

“We advise employees a number of weeks beforehand about upcoming crew redundancies,” he said.

“Where possible, we look to redeploy affected individuals to other Bechtel projects.”

Yet there is still demand for some skilled positions.

“As the projects get to their final stages we are continuing to recruit specialists,” Berg said.

“In fact we are in critical need of electrical instrumentation trades right now, so if you know of anyone looking for job with those skills, we’d love to hear from them.”

The BG-operated Queensland Curtis LNG project started producing last month. The Origin Energy-led Australia Pacific LNG project on the island is expected to start exports mid-year, while the Santos-led Gladstone LNG project on the island aims to start exports in the second half of 2015.