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March 30, 2012

$100 billion Infrastructure Backlog Unacceptable

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — tom @ 12:00 am

The $100 billion infrastructure backlog is impinging on Melbourne’s productivity says Committee for Melbourne acting chief executive officer Andrea Gaffney. In order to deal with the backlog, it has been suggested that an independent, non-government body be set up, the news of which comes only days after the announcement of the state government’s reinvestment in Victoria’s public transport system.

“We believe there is a significant infrastructure backlog in Melbourne to the tune of $100 billion and that price tag has increased over the last decade” says Gaffney.

She goes on to state that the backlog of infrastructure developments not only impedes on the smooth running of the state, but could actually effect its high liveability standard.

The push for infrastructure efficiency is in light of Melbourne’s drastic population growth, which is only expected to rise. Gaffney believes that an independent body would aid in the efficiency of getting these infrastructure projects out in order to effect long term goals.

“We believe the development of a plan should be looking out to the next 50 years. It should be long-term aspirational and not just necessarily looking out to the next 10 years or thereabouts” Gaffney says.

Backing these sentiments is executive board member for the Committee for Melbourne. He is pushing for the body to improve long-term planning by the government, rather than simply appeasing voters in the now.

“What we need is an all-party commitment to a long-term commitment for the city, so it’s a vision that sustains itself beyond the electoral cycle,” says Fricke, “we’ve got a lot of short-term thinking; we’d like to see some long-term thinking”.

A meeting will be commence shortly, by which a proposal for the independent infrastructure body may be presented.

March 29, 2012

Engineer Shortage Means Lost Opportunities

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — tom @ 11:57 pm

A shortage of engineers is hampering Australia’s ability to deliver on infrastructure and nation building needs, leading to millions of dollars in cost overruns and lost opportunities for engineering projects which have not gone ahead, an industry group says.

Speaking at a public hearing in Perth as part of a Senate Inquiry into the Shortage of Engineering and Related Employment Skills, Engineers Australia’s international and national director of policy Brent Jackson said Australia needs to address the engineering skills shortage as a matter of urgency.

“Australia produces less than half of its current annual engineering workforce needs,” Jackson says. “Even with Australian universities and TAFEs producing around 9,000 graduates annually, Australia is still unable to provide a reliable domestic solution to these key shortages.”

Jackson says engineering shortages have led to huge losses due to cost overruns and many more lost opportunities for infrastructure and sustainable development. He adds that over the past six years alone, more than 20 projects had to be abandoned because of problems finding suitably qualified staff.

Despite his concerns, Jackson applauds efforts on the part of the Department of Infrastructure and Transport with regard to the creation of the National Infrastructure Construction Schedule (NICS), a national database of planned infrastructure investments. Jackson says this will bring greater transparency to infrastructure scheduling and delivery and make it easier for the profession to plan projects and identify areas where more engineers are needed.

He says, however, that further reform to strengthen the profession is necessary, with careful workforce planning and career initiatives needed to attract highly skilled individuals – especially women – to the profession.

“As well, it’s important that reforms through the COAG of the seamless national economy progress by supporting a nationally consistent system of registration for engineers,” Jackson says. “This will help us deploy engineers of consistently high standard to wherever they are needed most.”

The need to encourage more women the enter the engineering field in particular has long been recognised by policy makers and is seen as a necessary step if Australia is to develop the skills it needs to meet the infrastructure requirements of the coming decade. Earlier this year, 23-year-old engineering student Marita Cheng was awarded the Young Australian of the Year for her efforts in promoting the profession as a career path to young girls in secondary schools across the country.

Industry Timetable Could Fix Skills Shortage | Victoria

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — tom @ 11:54 pm

The Victorian government is being pushed to outline a timetable for billion dollar state projects in order to further stop the increasing state skills shortage.

The hope is that by in doing so, the government would entice skilled industry workers to stay local instead of following the buck over to Western Australia or Queensland.

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) Chief Executive Mark Stone is in favour of using the state government’s second budget, which will be released in May, to promote long-term infrastructure plans as a way of instilling confidence in the skills-short state.

At the centre of the discussions is the multi-billion dollar East West Link project. With the estimated timeframe for the 18km road standing at close to ten years, the project will generate a large number of industry jobs on a long-term basis.

According to the VECCI, the suggested timetable would not only aid in keeping skilled contractors from finding work out of state, it would also offer greater investment confidence for major industry companies, who are also heading west.

VECCI chief executive Mark Stone cited construction, mining and engineering company John Holland, who are sending employees to the mines for engineering projects without the knowledge of the local job opportunities, as an example of the type of situation Victoria could face more and more often.

“They are flying them in and out of Western Australia at the moment to keep the skills within the company and not lose them to someone else or somewhere else,” he says.

Stone explains that greater knowledge of state infrastructure opportunities and their timeframes would allow for larger industry players to stay local.

“Companies like that need to have some idea what the prospects in Victoria are going to be over what timeframe, to then have confidence in keeping those staff on the books and not letting them go to a mining project in the Pilbara or somewhere like that,” he says.

Clearly any changes will have strong implications on the state budget, but those changes are something that the VECCI urge the premier to consider nonetheless.

March 21, 2012

Private sector calls for government reform to ease engineering shortage

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — tom @ 4:01 am

Consult Australia has recommended that Governments undergo significant reform in their procurement processes, to ease the burden of the engineering skills shortage on the private sector. Calling for improved capabilities within government; public sector contributions to the private industry’s training burden; and a more efficient use of the potential labour force, the Association sees these changes key to unlocking the industry’s ability to help ease the shortage and deliver the infrastructure Australia needs.
Consult Australia Chief Executive Officer, Megan Motto said that industry is concerned by the impacts of the shortage on the nation. “If the skills shortage is not addressed, we will continue to see a backlog for new infrastructure as well as critical maintenance and repair,” she said. “This backlog impedes our nation’s productivity, diminishes the quality of our surrounding environments and comes at a huge price to tax payers.
“With the recommendations made by Consult Australia, industry will be better positioned to help relieve the impact of the shortage.” This call from Consult Australia has been made in response to the federal Senate inquiry into the nexus between the demand for infrastructure delivery and the shortage of appropriate engineering and related employment skills in Australia.

Ms Motto said that the submission takes a holistic approach to addressing the skills shortage which over previous years has become a systemic rather than a cyclical problem. “In making these recommendations to government, Consult Australia aims to improve the overall appeal of the industry across both the public and private sectors,” said Ms Motto. “This will allow us to attract and retain the most skilled workers and ultimately ease private sector recruitment difficulties, steady the rising cost of labour, decrease the reliance on skilled migrants and decrease public sector delivery delays.”In their submission Consult Australia also identifies the root causes of the shortage.

A reduced pool of future engineers, the privatisation of public services, the transfer of the training responsibility to the private sector and the inefficient use of the skilled workforce are noted as some of the key causes. “There is a distinct disparity between the supply and demand of professionals within our industry,” said Ms Motto. “Better use of the existing pool of engineers across the public and private sector, supported by a steadier stream of graduates entering the industry are critical first steps that will at the very least, ease the issue.”

“Consult Australia looks forward to continuing this important conversation and bringing about genuine systematic change to foster a more productive and sustainable country.”

Leighton, MacMahon win Ichthys contract

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — tom @ 3:45 am

Leighton Holdings Ltd subsidiary John Holland and engineering firm MacMahon Holdings Ltd have won a $340 million contract for onshore work on Darwin’s Ichthys gas project.

A 50/50 joint venture between John Holland and MacMahon Holdings will carry out civil construction works associated with the onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and associated facilities for the Ichthys project.

The works included access roads, earthworks, drainage and ground improvement, Leighton said in a statement.

The $US34 billion ($A32.63 billion) Ichthys gas project will pump gas from offshore Western Australia to Darwin for processing, and is being undertaken by Japanese company Inpex and French energy major Total.

Mining companies prepare brown coal bids

Filed under: Resources — Tags: , , — tom @ 3:42 am
The Baillieu government wants to ramp up brown coal mining.The Baillieu government wants to ramp up brown coal mining. Photo: Justin McManus

MINING companies are preparing bids to extract billions of tonnes of brown coal from the Latrobe Valley under controversial plans being promoted by the Baillieu government, raising the prospect of a new South Gippsland port to export it.

Coal technology firm Exergen says it will bid for up to 1 billion tonnes of brown coal for export to Japan and India and for use in a new demonstration power plant.

Another firm, Australian Energy Company Limited, is seeking up to a billion tonnes of coal for export as briquettes and for a fertiliser project.

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The state government has confirmed details of a draft cabinet submission outlining plans for a competitive tender of brown coal allocations and a public relations push to convince the public of its merits in the era of climate change.

Energy Minister Michael O’Brien said Victoria was ”the energy hub of the country” and the government wanted to ramp up mining to exploit the state’s vast brown coal reserves to generate jobs and investment.

Exergen head Trevor Bourne told The Age the company had been talking with the offices of Premier Ted Baillieu and Mr O’Brien about its plans.

He said Exergen would use technology to remove moisture from brown coal, lowering its carbon emissions and making it more suitable for export. It had backing from Indian energy company Tata Power and Itochu Corporation of Japan.

He said Exergen also wanted to build a 7 to 10 megawatt $20 million demonstration power plant, backed by Australian firms Thiess and Sedgman.

”I think our technology fundamentally shifts that paradigm on brown coal. We can reduce the CO2 emissions using our technology on brown coal to that of using gas with combined-cycle technology,” he said.

Australian Energy Company Limited chairman Allan Blood, who believes low-emissions centrifuge technology to remove moisture from the coal could be applied on a large scale, said a rail line could easily be built from the Latrobe Valley to a bulk shipping wharf at Port Anthony in south Gippsland, which is already being developed.

He said the private sector would foot the entire bill, with several infrastructure funds and global groups expressing interest to finance, build and operate the facility, and allowing other industries rail access to the port.

”Chemically it will be probably the most pristine coal in the world,” Mr Blood said.

His former company, Australian Power and Energy Limited, previously won an allocation of coal in 2002, which was later sold to another firm. Exergen lobbied the former Bracks and Brumby governments in 2005 and in 2009 for coal allocations, seeking support for a $1.5 billion export plan which was later dumped.

A Labor source involved in the 2002 allocation and who was around for the 2005 lobbying said: ”The brown coal export push is led by a group of fairly anonymous businessmen with no track record of success in project delivery or job creation.

”They spent most of the last decade pestering Bracks and Brumby and now they see a new target in Baillieu.”

Environment Victoria’s Mark Wakeham said Exergen was making ”the same bold claims” as it had before ”and it appears the Baillieu government is taking the bait”.

Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson cautiously welcomed the brown coal push, saying: ”Brown coal exports represent the potential to develop new technologies, industry and jobs in the Latrobe Valley.”

University of Melbourne climate change scientist Professor David Karoly said current use of brown coal for electricity generation had made Victoria’s carbon intensity worse than in China.

March 15, 2012

Facebook LEEDing both Online and Offline

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — tom @ 5:48 am

Facebook Data Center Prineville Oregon

This year has seen a spate of Information Technology and Internet based service companies moving out of the online realm and into the built one, becoming promotional leaders in their own right in sustainable construction. And what a fantastic promotion that is. Google, Facebook and Apple, as I.T. and online brands, have the ability to reach billions of people. Facebook has 800 million active users; two billion searches are undertaken daily on Google and Apple just saw a 2011 second quarter revenue of $24.67 billion. These are an influential group of brands.

And anything they promote has the potential to influence the globe.

This year alone Google has opened its first retail and office building in London, both of which have high green standards; Apple has revealed plans for a sustainable headquarters of ‘Campus’ in Cupertino California, and now in addition to their latest green Data Centre in Lulea, Sweden, Facebook has announced that their Prineville Centre has reached LEED Gold Certification.

Facebook Data Center in Oregon

The Oregon-based centre lies on a foundation of innovation and efficiency as a basic ideology, making energy efficient changes to the technology’s architecture in order to lower excess carbon emissions.

Major technology changes have been seen through the implementation of evaporative cooling, custom servers and “Novel electrical distribution from an on-site substation”.

Evaporative cooling is a simple and effective way of creating a moderate climate using little energy through a system that uses the evaporation of outside air for cooling rather than high energy cooling towers. This system has been carried 100% throughout the building. The new custom servers have been created to use 38% less energy through sophisticated cooling technologies. The last major change to the electrical distribution is simply a reworking of the power flow from the on site substation to the date centre so that more energy is saved, losing only 7.5% of energy in comparison to traditional conversions which lose 21-27%.

As with the centre in Sweden, orientation and location have been used in their capacity, with the cool clime channeled to aid in the cooling of the various machines.

Further green statistics include the use of FSC-certified sustainable managed wood used throughout 91% of the building’s construction, 83% of waste recycled, 100% use of captured rainwater (for irrigation and bathroom facilities), 30% of recycled materials used and a solar generation of 204,000 Kilowatt hours per year.

Facebook Data Center Interior

This all adds up to a 38% decrease in energy consumption in comparison to the company’s other data centres and make it a whopping 52% more efficient than other comparable buildings.

Facebook’s LEED gold certification will only add fuel to what is steadily becoming an all out ‘Green Race’, with each competitor hoping to create the greenest building; a refreshing and dramatic change from historic trends of biggest, fastest, strongest, most expensive and best. Although best does seem fitting for buildings of this nature.

http://designbuildsource.com.au/facebook-leeding-online-and-offline

Pixel Receives World Highest Green Rating

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — tom @ 5:44 am

worlds greenest pixel building

The Pixel building – the one-of-a-kind green building that has set new standards in this country – has gone global, receiving the world’s highest environmental rating.

Pixel received the highest-ever LEED rating by the US Green Building Council, outscoring the previous highest scorer by 10 points. Located on the corner of Bouverie and Queensbury streets in Carlton, the building was created by Australian industry greats Grocon.

Grocon Chief Executive Officer Daniel Grollo explains the immensity of the impressive honour.

“There are over 44,000 buildings in 120 countries around the world that have used the LEED rating system and in scoring 105 points out of a possible 110, Pixel has now surpassed all of them,” he says.

Sharing this achievement with Grocon are designing architectural firm studio505 and sustainability consultants Umow Lai.

That team worked together closely in order to create the award-winning building, which is both carbon neutral and water balanced and includes wind and solar energy-producing technologies. The group plans to continue using these green technologies when working on future projects.

“The capacity to collaborate with like-minded individuals thinking ‘outside the square’ has been key in the successful delivery of Pixel and in ensuring its achievement of 105 LEED points,” say studio505 directors Dylan Brady and Dirk Zimmermann.

The design duo went on to pinpoint the highly-functional, yet aesthetically pleasing unique facade as a key factor in the building’s mass appeal.

“The colourful panelised façade is complex and based on not only aesthetics but also science, to allow maximum daylight, shade, views and glare control, whilst creating the building’s identity,” they say.

By Emily D’Alterio

http://designbuildsource.com.au/pixel-receives-world-highest-green-rating

Architecture Preservation to Aid Urban Development

Filed under: Civil — Tags: , , — tom @ 5:41 am

heritage building and modern building

When it comes to future architectural projects, urban planning brings the promise of an exciting new built landscape. When building from scratch, possibilities are seemingly endless in this technologically-advanced era.

However, there is a very real cultural threat that comes into play when the new completely takes over with no regard to the old.

Historically, humans have a strong track record in terms of architectural preservation. Certain architectural relics from the dawn of humanity still remain; cave paintings, the pyramids and classical architecture are still very much intact and revered in the modern world.

Issues arise when buildings of a historical nature but that may not be deemed to hold historical importance, are removed in order to make way for their modern counterparts.

Not only does a reliance on new developments create resource issues including waste and excess carbon emissions, it can also create equally destructive social issues.

pyramid and cave painting

The journal article ‘The Restless Urban Landscape: Economic and Sociocultural Change and the Transformation of Metropolitan Washington DC’ from the Annals of the Association of American Geographers explores the social impact of urban planning and changes.

“The particular implications of this transformation for the supply and demand of elements of the built environment involve changes in the organisation and product mix of developers and construction companies, in the roles and professional orientations of architects and planners, and in commodity aesthetics and patterns of consumption among a ‘new bourgeoisie,’” the journal states.

Architecture creates a cultural identity. In order to foster the past or learn from it, it is important that architectural history is allowed to remain. It is when this sense of identity or local pride is interrupted or changed that social issues can arise. In completely discounting heritage buildings and infrastructure, cultural identity is lost, oftentimes bringing with it cultural apathy as well as a loss of community and identity.

These issues stand aside from the wasteful nature of not maximising the potential of built spaces. In fact, refurbishing or even retrofitting buildings deemed to be outdated is arguably even more in line with sustainability principles than a modern green build.

“Because historic preservation essentially involves the conservation of energy and natural resources it is really the greenest of the building arts,” says Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

For holistic urban development to be undertaken, a focus needs to include the social elements of future projects. If architectural history is not preserved and stitched into the new urban fabric, future urban planning will not reach its full potential.

By Tim Moore

http://designbuildsource.com.au/3-preservation-architecture-aid-urban-development

Perth Arena Nears Completion

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — tom @ 5:38 am

construction of perth arena

The highly controversial Perth Arena is finally set to open in November, two years behind schedule.

The arena has been riddled with issues since its 2005 conception, including a budget increase of up to $400 million and design elements that have led critics to liken it to a ‘crushed beer can.’

Whether loved or loathed, however, there has been no denying the iconic status the building is expected to achieve, a notion reaffirmed by WA premier Colin Barnett.

“It’s an iconic building for Perth, no doubt about that,” he says. “This will create memories in sport, in the arts, in great rock concerts, whatever it might be, for the next 50 years in Western Australia.”

Despite his laudatory comments, even the premier has mixed feelings about the building’s extremely angular façade. He was less than effusive in his praise when asked whether he liked the building’s form.

construction perth arena

“Not quite, but it’s warming on me,” he said.

The project, which includes seating for up to 15,500 people and a cutting edge retractable roof, has come in at a whopping $550 million, dwarfing the original budget of $160 million. That cost increase has not been lost on the state government but is now being put aside in order to move forward with the plethora of ongoing industry plans for the state, particularly in the Perth CBD.

“While this project has had some controversy, particularly over the cost of it, it’s time now to move on,” says Barnett.

The industry will now focus on plans including the Perth Waterfront project, which is also under heavy scrutiny regarding road planning and density issues.

It appears that while the controversy surrounding the arena’s construction is nearly over for the WA government, there will soon be another controversy be another to take its place.

By Tim Moore

http://designbuildsource.com.au/perth-arena-nears-completion

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