Road authorities in Australia and New Zealand are facing significant challenges in maintaining the required levels of core technical expertise. Thecurrent environment is characterised by high competition for key technical specialities such as civil engineers, an ageing workforce within road authorities, and flat growth in the number of new graduates in relevant engineering disciplines. At the same time, the requirements placed on road authorities by infrastructure owners (governments) are increasingly complex and have created a requirement for new commercial, legal and risk management skills. Together, these factors have the potential to reduce the capacity of road authorities in the future to perform their key tasks of transport infrastructure construction, maintenance and management. In 2005 Austroads Council took a strategic decision to establish a Capability Taskforce. Its role is to assist Council in ensuring the sustainability of core technical road expertise and to provide a forum for knowledge sharing initiatives. Since its establishment the Taskforce has undertaken research relatingto the level of demand for roads-related technical expertise over the next decade. It has developed marketing materials which are designed to encourage secondary and tertiary students to select engineering as an undergraduate course and road engineering as a career. A review has been completed which identifies gaps across post graduate courses in core technical competencies required by the road industry. A knowledge-sharing forum comprising member authorities and professional engineering associations has been established to exchange approaches relating to capability building, staff attraction and retention, and maintaining technical knowledge as older staffretire. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract