Roads Australia
The Federal Government’s new Infrastructure Australia body needs to address the uneven flow of projects in the national infrastructure pipeline as one of its first priorities, according to the ARF.
While welcoming the appointment of Sir Rod Eddington to Chair the new body, the Australian Road Forum is calling on Infrastructure Australia to play a lead role in getting the states and Commonwealth to better coordinate with the private sector on the planning and delivery of major infrastructure projects.
“One of the ways of addressing the national skills shortage, which is impacting heavily on the road construction business, is to better coordinate the flow of projects into the marketplace,” says ARF President, Ray Fisher.
“As one major project finishes we should have another ready to go so that resources can be moved around seamlessly.
“At present we can have two or three major projects happening in one place at any one time, then a three or four-year drought.”
ARF's policy priorities in this area were set out by Leighton Holdings Chief Executive and ARF member, Wal King, in his address to the ARF's annual lunch last December. At the lunch, Mr King told ARF members one of the major constraints to infrastructure delivery was the lack of government coordination.
“For example, at one stage in Sydney we had three mega projects at once - the Cross City Tunnel, the M7 and the Epping to Chatswood railway. Now there is not one major project in Sydney,” Mr King said at the lunch.
Mr Fisher says the challenge for governments is to coordinate the flow of projects ‘across state boundaries’, and at the same time provide longer-term planning and funding pipelines with firm commencement dates.
“The project pipeline needs to be longer and more transparent,” Mr Fisher says.
“The road construction industry can’t marshal resources overnight, nor can it adequately meet skill demands across-the-board when all the work falls in its lap at the one time.”
The ARF conducted its own survey of road industry skills last October, and found an alarming lack of confidence in the industry’s ability to adequately resource projects in the medium term.
Four out of five survey respondents said the current skills shortage would seriously impact on the road industry’s ability to deliver major Commonwealth and state road programs, on time and budget, over the next two to five years.
The survey identified serious shortages in all major skill categories, including engineers, field supervisors and road construction workers.
“The skills crisis is very real in the road industry, but one way we can overcome it is to make more effective use of the resources we currently have,” Mr Fisher says.
“Our organisation looks forward to working with Infrastructure Australia to ensure this happens.”
Mr Fisher says ARF is particularly encouraged by the appointment of Sir Rod Eddington, given his vast experience in transport and planning.
Submitted by Mark Bowmer on Wednesday February 27th 2008 2:36pm