Engineering skill shortages are back on the national media agenda, with a number of stories appearing in the past week - including one quoting Roads Australia.
Roads Australia Vice President and Capacity Chapter Chairman, David Stuart-Watt, was quoted in the Australian Financial Review commenting on the Australian National Engineering Taskforce survey that reveals critical gaps in engineering skills (see story below).
David told the AFR there was “deep concern” over the capacity of the existing workforce to deliver the tens of billions of infrastructure lined up by governments, as well as desperately needed asset management and maintenance services.
David also represented RA’s views on this and other capacity and asset management issues - including the importance of funding for maintenance and road renewal - at a breakfast briefing hosted by AAPA in Sydney this week.
The Fin Review also reported this week that skilled job vacancies rose by 2.4 per cent in the month of March.
In other news, The Australian reported this week that a survey by the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies has found that 44 per cent of Australians want the private sector to play a bigger role in providing public transport.
A survey of nearly 2400 engineers by the Australian National Engineering Taskforce (ANET) has revealed critical gaps in engineering skills and capacity at workplaces across Australia, highlighting the potentially catastrophic impacts of Australia’s engineering skills crisis.
“These results show that the chronic shortfall in Australia’s engineering services capacity, which is well-recognised by Government and business, is already hitting key engineering services and impacting on infrastructure quality, productivity and cost,” said APESMA CEO and ANET spokesperson, Chris Walton.
According to the survey, 60 per cent of engineers have identified a skills shortage in their work area.
Fifty-four per cent say there is a loss of capability in their workplace, and 40 per cent feel their organisation doesn’t have the right mix of engineering skills to meet current or future needs.
Walton says engineers working in all sectors of the economy have identified impacts on their workplaces and the community that cannot be ignored.
The internet-based survey of 2392 engineers was conducted over a two-week period in December 2009. Respondents answered a range of questions related to skills, capability and training.
In a related survey of 14 of the largest consulting firms, respondents confirmed the shortfall in the domestic labour market and commented on the high cost involved in recruiting overseas.
“Employers confirm that there is a skills shortage in the professional engineering sector, which is more than simply sectoral or cyclical. It’s a systemic problem,” says Megan Motto, CEO of Consult Australia and ANET spokesperson.
Skills Australia has recently identified engineering skills development as an area requiring intervention from Government and industry to ensure that future community need is met.
ANET, the organisation that conducted the survey, is a coalition of APESMA, Engineers Australia, the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, the Deans of Engineering and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
It has been formed to investigate the national shortfall in engineering capacity and to work with the Federal Government and industry to formulate actions and policy recommendations to solve the problem with industry support. Its current project is mapping the engineering skills shortfall across industries.
The survey can be downloaded at the ANET website.
Roads Australia’s Sustainability Chapter will pursue discussions with state road authorities to push for the inclusion of a Sustainability Plan requirement in contractor pre-selection criteria for future major road projects.
The move was agreed on at the Chapter’s meeting in Brisbane last week.
RA Policy Director, Christine Keyes, says the aim is to raise the bar by ensuring a level playing field.
"All members of the Chapter agree that this will improve sustainability outcomes in road projects," she says.
RA would then encourage SRA’s to adopt a set of metrics to allow monitoring of the performance of projects in delivering on the plan.
It was also agreed at last week’s meeting that the Chapter would work to align with or advance the Australian Transport Council's agenda item of “Adapting transport systems to changed climate conditions”.
In other RA policy news, the Congestion Chapter also met in Brisbane last week under new Chair, Alan Tesch.
Significant progress has been made on developing the framework for a policy paper, focussing on reliability - the key to enhanced accessibility and mobility on our networks.
This will be circulated to chapter members soon for comment.
The Queensland Government has announced a six month trial to keep trucks in the left hand lane along the busy Brisbane Urban Corridor (BUC) on Brisbane’s southside, saying the move should ease congestion for the 50,000 motorists who travel the route every day.
The news comes on the heels of a similar announcement in Victoria. Earlier this month, the Brumby Government said it would progressively implement restrictions on trucks using the right-hand lane on freeways with three or more lanes of traffic in each direction.
The Bligh Government has approved the six-month trial on the eight kilometre stretch of road, which will kick off this month.
The BUC is made up of Granard, Riawena, Kessels, and Mt Gravatt-Capalaba roads, and links the Ipswich Motorway at Rocklea with the Gateway Motorway at Wishart.
Main Roads Minister, Craig Wallace, said the new trial was on top of restrictions already in place along the Brisbane Urban Corridor, with no trucks over 4.5 tonnes allowed to use the BUC as a through-route.
Major construction work has started on Victoria’s Nagambie Bypass, several months ahead of schedule.
“We have already brought forward the awarding of the two multi-million dollar contracts, and I am glad to see major construction has been fast-tracked following the early start of works between Kirwans Bridge-Longwood Road and Weir Road last December,” Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, said last week
When completed in 2012, the Nagambie Bypass will provide a missing link with drivers able to travel on a safer freeway-standard road from Melbourne to Shepparton. Truck drivers will also benefit from being able to maintain a consistent 110km/h speed between Melbourne and Shepparton, rather than negotiating different speed zones.
In other Victorian road news, construction work on new turning lanes on the Western Highway is set to start next month as part of the first stage of the $11.4 million project to build a new trailer exchange at Nhill. The contract to construct the turning lanes has been awarded to P Miller Contractors.
It’s been a significant month for toll road operations, with Brisbane’s new CLEM7 tunnel opening to traffic and ConnectEast, the owner of Melbourne’s EastLink, passing another important customer service milestone.
Bilfinger Berger Services, in a joint venture with Leighton Services, has commenced operation and maintenance of the CLEM7 tollway in Brisbane following its opening on March 15.
Operator RiverCity Motorway marked the opening of the tunnel with the announcement of a special two-month introductory period that includes both toll-free travel and discounted tolls.
The CLEM7, or the Clem Jones Tunnel, is a 6.8 kilometre tollway with twin, two-lane tunnels linking five major roads north and south of the Brisbane River. It cuts-out up to 24 sets of traffic lights and will reduce travel time by as much as a third. The tunnel opened to traffic seven months ahead of contract completion date.
Meanwhile, ConnectEast, the owner and operator of EastLink, announced this week it had issued more than 350,000 Breeze tags to customers for use on EastLink and other tollways. This represents an increased of 115,000 tags in the past 12 months.
ConnectEast Managing Director, Dennis Cliche, said that customer demand for tags remained strong, with the distribution of around 9,000 Breeze tags during February 2010.
“ConnectEast is continuing to build a strong customer base, with more and more people opening accounts, getting tags and factoring EastLink into their daily travel plans,” Mr Cliche said.
“Our research shows the new tags are each generating around $24 a month from an average of nine trips and these rates have been consistent throughout the past year. The ongoing rollout of tags indicates that EastLink’s traffic volumes and revenue will continue to grow.”
Abigroup has been awarded the contract for construction of an overpass at one of West Australia’s most notorious accident black spots, the intersection of the Reid Highway and Alexander Drive in Perth.
The awarding of the contract to Abigroup follows the recent opening of Stage 2 of the $52m Geraldton Southern Transport Corridor - completed by Abigroup for Main Roads Western Australia two and a half months ahead of schedule.
The new intersection will be constructed in a traditional ‘diamond’ layout and consists of two separate bridges to carry Reid Highway traffic over Alexander Drive. Included in the contract is widening works in Alexander Drive to provide a double southbound right turn on to the Reid Highway westbound and a bus lane in each direction.
Construction work is due to begin in June 2010, with completion scheduled for April 2011.
Work has begun on Auckland’s high-profile Victoria Park Tunnel project (VPT), with Parsons Brinckerhoff providing mechanical and electrical system design for the tunnel as well as 3D visualisation services.
PB has joined the NZ Transport Agency, Beca, Fletcher Construction and Higgins Contractors in the Victoria Park Alliance. The Alliance’s task is to reduce congestion at the Victoria Park flyover on Auckland’s north–south motorway. The flyover will be modified to accommodate four southbound lanes, while three new northbound lanes will be constructed in a tunnel 440 m long under Victoria Park. Improvements will also be made to State Highway 1 through St Marys Bay [to the Harbour Bridge].
Seven months into the project, the Alliance has agreed the Target Outturn Cost (TOC), and commenced construction. According to PB’s General Manager of Geotechnical, Tunnels and Geospatial Charlie Jewkes, PB’s role so far has focused largely on the tunnel systems concept design, inputs to the Target Outturn Cost, and planning the procurement of the tunnel systems fit-out.
“The procurement, construction and commissioning of the tunnel mechanical, electrical and environmental systems will be undertaken by the Alliance,” he said.
“This requires PB’s team on the project to undertake a fully-documented, detailed design for these elements of work, which is a departure from the usual process of outsourcing these works to a design-and-construct subcontractor. We expect this model to become more common in the future in the Australia–Pacific region, as it is providing significant benefits in areas including value engineering, innovation and risk management.”
The project has already attracted public and media attention: not only will it construct Auckland’s first urban road tunnel, but it will affect a number of highly visible heritage sites. In particular, the historic Rob Roy Hotel (most recently known as the Birdcage Tavern) will have to be relocated 60m from its original site, temporarily maintained away from the tunnel construction site, and then returned close to its original location when tunnel construction is complete.
“Our 3D Visualisation team has put together a detailed three-dimensional model of the project, which allows stakeholders to ‘fly through’ and explore the project, prior to construction commencing. This has allowed the stakeholder consultation team to communicate the features of the project much more effectively, and will also allow areas of particular interest — such as the Rob Roy relocation — to be explored in four dimensions so that changes over time can be investigated and observed.”
Demolition, services relocation and site establishment works are well underway and construction of the highway and tunnel works will commence in March/April 2010.
Work will start immediately on the first group of projects to be funded from the Commonwealth’s $250 million Bruce Highway Safety Package.
Totalling close to $24 million, the first round of funding will fix 35 black spots, with projects varying from intersection upgrades to new signage and line-markings to the clearing of roadside hazards, Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced last week.
Mr Albanese said the projects were chosen following a detailed assessment of where accidents had regularly occurred over the last five years, as well as the nature and cause of each of them.
Further funding allocations from the Bruce Highway Safety Package will be announced later in the year, he said.
The NRMA has called for truck safety to be a greater government priority, with freight movement and the number of trucks on the road forecast to double by 2020 and triple by 2050.
The NSW-based motoring organisation has this month released a new report on the safety needs of heavy vehicles in Australia.
Australia-wide, crashes involving heavy vehicles are estimated to cost $2 billion a year and more than 300 people are killed annually in crashes involving trucks, according to the Transport Industry Safety Group.
NRMA President, Wendy Machin, said this week safer trucks, a safer road network, improved truck rest area facilities and more awareness among motorists on how to share the roads safely with heavy vehicles were needed to reduce the number of crashes on NSW roads.
"There is no doubt that trucks play an important role in moving freight around the state quickly and efficiently and it is critical that in 2010, governments have a plan for trucks and cars to co-exist safely,” she said.
"Since July 2007, the NRMA has called for the compulsory adoption of the latest safety features for trucks, improved roads, more rest areas complying to Australian Standards and a greater commitment by governments to encourage all motorists to share the road responsibly."
Truck safety features the NRMA has been advocating to become compulsory since 2007 are: Heavy vehicles and trailers must have front, side and rear under-run barriers. All heavy vehicles should have tamper-proof on-board monitoring to provide feedback on vehicle operations. Electronic stability control should be fitted to all new heavy vehicles and trailers to help drivers maintain control and protect motorists from truck collisions.
Ms Machin said the NRMA welcomed the recent commitment by the Australian Government to invest in a $16 million program to improve the inadequate number and quality of truck rest areas, however it was unacceptable that truck safety otherwise seems to have been largely ignored.
Click here to download the NRMA’s new report on truck safety.
The 2010 Roads Australia Summit is fast approaching, but there is still time to register for what promises to be a landmark event.
The Summit takes place in Sydney at WatersEdge on April 22 and 23.
The latest program for the two-day event in Sydney is available at the RA website. Participants can also register at the website.
This year's Summit is supported by Gold Sponsors Abigroup, ARRB, Hyder, Leighton Contractors and SKM, as well as Silver Sponsor, Clayton Utz.
The John Shaw Medal dinner, to be held on the evening of April 22 and sponsored by Parsons Brinckerhoff, is now sold out.
Submitted by Mark Bowmer on Friday March 26th 2010 3:37pm
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