"This award is for the women who have shaped the Indigenous business industry," Jasmine Kadic told the Supply Nation Supplier Diversity Awards gala in Boorloo on Wednesday night, moments after being named Indigenous Businesswoman of the Year. "For the grandmothers who walked the streets and fought to be seen. For the women who continued to show up, even when they felt like nobody was watching."

The Whadjuk Ballardong woman, managing director of Perth infrastructure business Benang, dedicated the award to women "who have faced barriers, discrimination, doubt and hardship and still found a way to keep going", to women lost to domestic and family violence, and to mothers "who have felt alone, who have carried the weight of their families on their shoulders, and somehow found the strength to keep moving forward".

"For every woman who has ever looked at her circumstances and thought, maybe I can't, I am here tonight to tell you, you can," she said. Her final words were for her mother: "The woman I am, the woman I continue to become, and the strength I carry, it all comes from you."

Speaking exclusively to the Indigenous Business Review (a National Indigenous Times publication) on Thursday, Kadic said the speech drew on the women who came before her.

"I was channelling my grandmothers who paved the way for me to be there," she said. "I felt their energy that night, so I took that up with me on stage. I really wanted to make sure it was a speech that would honour them and the women I surround myself with, and also the women that don't have a voice."

The award capped a landmark week for Western Australia, with Supply Nation's Connect, the country's largest Indigenous business event, held in the west for the first time. More than 2,000 people moved through the Indigenous Business Tradeshow at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, where more than 230 verified Indigenous businesses exhibited.

"It's been powerful to see so many people come together for Supply Nation, not just Aboriginal people themselves but our allies," Kadic said. "The network we've all created is quite powerful."

She said it was special to win as a West Australian with the national business community finally in town.

"We've got some pretty mature businesses in this sector who are doing some incredible things," she said. "Everyone was saying how much they loved having it over here. It was good for them to finally come over and see what the West has to offer, which I think is pretty bloody good."

Kadic co-founded Benang in 2018 with her husband Damir and business partner Goran Utjesinovic. Eight years on, the multi-disciplinary contractor delivers underground services across water, power and gas for clients including Western Power, ATCO and Water Corporation, with a fabrication arm rounding out what she calls a turnkey offering. The business runs from a head office in Subiaco, a fabrication workshop, a laydown yard in Wangara and a site at Perth Airport.

Benang employs just over 80 staff, 20 per cent of them Indigenous, and Kadic ties that pipeline directly to the security of the contracts the business wins. Its long-term partnership with ATCO has anchored a framework for apprenticeships.

"It's the continuity of business, the cash flow, the contracts, being able to expand over a few years, in order for me to make a difference when trying to upskill people," she said. "That's the real key to creating change, and we are doing that with ATCO."

That continuity has been hard earned. "We've worked really hard on our relationships with our clients, so we're not so nomadic these days," she said. "You do always have to be on your feet. You can't be complacent."

The company is structured into water, power and gas units, and moves crews between them. "What's powerful about that is we're able to use those employees and cross-skill them, so they're able to have that work all the time."

The win landed a day after Main Roads confirmed WA's transport portfolio had passed $1.1 billion in spending with Aboriginal businesses, a milestone recognised on the same night when Main Roads and the Transport Portfolio Aboriginal Engagement branch were named Government Member of the Year. Kadic said government procurement had helped to open real doors for Benang.

"They have definitely been a huge impact with us being able to get business and that opportunity, but you do have to remember that you also have to be a good business doing good work," she said. "Half the reason I'm on that stage is because of the support we get from clients, and then creating those opportunities for my people. That's an outcome in itself, to show what the IPP has done."

The next few years are about growth: getting the fabrication arm fully up and running and embedding Benang deeper in the industry. "We really want to become a really embedded contractor within the industry," she said, "and just be known as an awesome business delivering safe work, with a social footprint."