• Looking for Staff Banner

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.