Running a small engineering business in regional Queensland doesn’t come with a lot of external benchmarks. You know your work is good when clients call back, when the system you commissioned is still running cleanly three years later, and when other engineers on site ask how you did something. But it’s rare to have that validated outside your own industry.
So when Beetle Engineering was announced as a Round 3 advancement in the Telstra Best in Business 2025 awards, it meant something.
What the program is
Telstra Best in Business recognises Australian small and medium businesses for innovation, customer impact, and growth. The program draws entries from across every industry and every state. Advancing to Round 3 means clearing two rounds of national judging, putting Beetle Engineering in a very small group of businesses that made it that far in the process.
It’s one step from the finalist stage. For a young engineering firm based in Mackay, competing against businesses from every sector across the country, that’s a result we’re proud of.
What got us there
The judges assess how a business creates value: for clients, for the community, and for the industry it operates in. In our submission we talked about:
- Delivering RPEQ-signed electrical engineering and control system work from a regional base, without the capital city overhead
- Building technical capability in Mackay that keeps skilled engineers working locally rather than on fly-in fly-out rosters
- Taking on complex industrial automation projects: mining, sugar, ports, manufacturing, and doing the full scope, from design through to commissioning
- The Mackay Sugar AEMO integration project, which brought real-time wholesale electricity pricing into a sugar mill’s control system for the first time
None of that is flashy. It’s solid industrial engineering work done well, delivered on time, and documented properly. Apparently that’s worth recognising.
What’s next
We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing: taking on technically demanding projects, staying honest about what’s involved, and building a track record of work that speaks for itself.
If you’ve got a project in the pipeline, get in touch.