Did you know that IPWEA runs an industry peer-to-peer forum called Ask Your Mates (AYM)? It has over 22,000 subscribers that allows industry practitioners to ask pressing questions of their colleagues and get real-time answers.

This is simply “the industry helping the industry,” through IPWEA. You don’t have to be a member to use AYM – it’s all about shared learning. 

Recently IPWEA published a challenging, in-depth article about the skill shortage in engineers for regional and rural councils and the difficulties they experience in attracting and retaining this much needed pool of talent for local government.

There have been many replies to this thread and a great number of insightful comments have been posted.

One of the most ‘lateral thinking’ ideas was to develop a scorecard system to rate general mangers: those that cut and retrench staff are marked down; those that employ and engage in training are marked up.

While I'm not proposing such a system, it does highlight that perhaps councils should be scored on the amount of organisational training that they undertake, and with particular bonus points attributed for training opportunities such as offering cadetships for engineers, for those skills in highest demand.  

One of the core principles of IPWEA, and in particular the NAMS.PLUS system that 70% of councils use, is that we strive to build your internal capacity and resilience. There is definitely a need and a place for engaging external consultants to assist in implementation, peak workload periods, experienced leadership, project managing and such like – but consultants cannot replace the resilience within an organisation when you develop your own staff commitment to knowledge, culture and systems.

As an organisation, you can choose to compete for cheque-book employment, or you can invest in training and cadetships to build your own internal capacity.

If you have a view on this, join the conversation on AYM and be sure to look out for our next inspire magazine, which features the skills, needs and challenges of the engineering profession in Australia and New Zealand with particular emphasis on local government.