In a time where record infrastructure investment is taking place across Australia, Victoria’s level of infrastructure spending still stands out.

A 2018 Deloitte Access Economics report found Victorian infrastructure investment had outpaced all other states in the three months to June, with $106.2 billion of infrastructure being built or planned across both the public and private sectors.

DR COLLETTE BURKE
Victoria Chief Engineer, Exner Group Managing Director, VicTrack Director

As the state’s first ever Chief Engineer, Dr Collette Burke has been tasked with helping the government ensure this fortune is being spent wisely, providing technical and evidence-based input, and that the right projects are set up for success. Dr Burke brings 25 years’ experience in the engineering and construction industry, across sectors such as rail, road, tunnelling, telecommunications, building and manufacturing. She has a PhD in risk management, and is also Managing Director of Exner Group and a Director of VicTrack.

Since stepping into the role in 2018, Dr Burke has worked closely with industry groups, including IPWEA Victoria. With her time in the role at the halfway mark, inspire spoke to Dr Burke about her achievements to date and where her focus lies in 2019.

inspire: After a year in this role, what actions have you taken that you believe have made the greatest impact?

Dr Collette Burke: One thing I’m really pleased about is that we mobilised a group to look at where engineering is being performed across Victoria, which culminated in the Victorian State of Engineering Report. It not only looks at what the initiatives and things that we need to progress in the coming years, but it also uncovered absolutely fantastic engineering that’s occurring in the state. There is so much engineering in Victoria and it was such a shame we couldn’t showcase it all in the report.

A prime example of these amazing engineering organisations is Furphy for stainless steel tanks in Shepparton, Knuckey in Winchelsea for agricultural equipment, or Relectrify, who are seeking to repurpose old batteries with improved battery management systems in Cremorne. Victoria is truly alive and buzzing with engineering innovation and we really need to get behind these Victorian innovators.

The Victorian State of Engineering Report was informed by a lot of consultations – I think we had something like about 260 stakeholder meetings or meetings with different government departments or industry associations or organisations last year, which was a huge effort. One of the key areas of focus from all these stakeholders was adoption of innovative processes, such as digital engineering. In this space, Victoria has really great technology and applications, but it’s not widespread, and is in pockets not just Victoria, but right around Australia and overseas.

That culminated in the Victorian Digital Asset Strategy (VDAS). We had lots of government and industry consultation in Victoria and Australia-wide to help put together what this strategic framework should look like. We’re proud to say that we’ve launched this now, and this will continue to be a source of excitement for the state.

There’s two other areas that we’re focusing on. One is sustainable construction. We’ve obviously got a huge drain on our natural resources here, so we’ve focused on looking at how do we reduce that drain and by perhaps looking at the standards, and are looking at recycled products and can we substitute them in lieu of natural products.

We’ve got quite a bit of work happening in that area, and lots of collaboration with a really good group of people, particularly Sustainability Victoria,

Australian Roads Research Board, Austroads, VicRoads, Australian Asphalt Pavement Association (AAPA), Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV), and of course – IPWEA. I have full confidence that we’re on the right journey. All these people that are very interested in coming together to collaborate and do work to make a change in this area, and I think that’s fantastic to see some really good work in that sustainable construction. That being said, I’m always eager to hear from IPWEA engineers that have really pushed the boundaries in this space.

inspire: Has your focus evolved since stepping into the role a year ago?

Burke: [There’s a focus on] building capacity within the sector. There’s so much work going on, there’s a huge competition for resources, so we’re looking at how we build that pool of resources. Engineering is one aspect, but also looking at the trades and the skills level.

What’s occurred now is we’ve got a bit of momentum in industry and we have formed working groups to start to target this area and come up with initiatives to look at building that pool. Some are around skill, some are around free TAFE courses, some are around access to people and attraction of more people into the sector, and of course changing the culture of the industry – that’s a very big, evolving area and there’s not a day that we’re out that someone doesn’t mention it to us!

inspire: How worried should we be about having enough engineers to deliver this massive pipeline of infrastructure projects?

Burke: Engineers are certainly in demand. Never has there been a better time to be an engineer! We’re not at crisis, but we do need to find ways of retaining engineers in industry, and continuing to meet this record-level infrastructure spend with capable engineers. That, I believe, needs a good and healthy environment to work in. I think that’s a really big factor, because with the amount of work that’s on, it does put stress on projects and work environments and demand, so we need to make sure that people are working at a healthy level.

We know we’re going to have this sustained level of infrastructure, so we need to make sure we’ve got a healthy pipeline of people coming into the sector, as well as being retained in the sector. That means targeting people in engineering degrees and technology degrees, it’s ensuring that they complete and they’re supported throughout their course, they get work experience and that we bring them into industry.

inspire: How do you think we can achieve better cooperation between levels of government, particularly when it comes to infrastructure projects?

Burke: Through our engagement with industry we’re seeing that there’s really great pockets of work, but we don’t always connect it up. So, a huge focus from late last year and continuing into this year, is creating the linkages between state and local government. We’ve still got more work to do there. How do we connect the right people to progress work collaboratively? I think we’ve been very successful to date, and we need to continue to do more of that.

We’re also investigating setting up communities of practice across government. There’s a lot of common interest where people just wanting to connect, so there wasn’t previously an engineers in government forum, so we’re actually going to establish that for this year to connect across any agency, whether it’s in state or local government, so they can get together and discuss what their priorities are and look at if there’s common areas of interest and how we progress some of that work. That’s what is done is through a lot of IPWEA forums and conferences.

I’ve been invited to a number of IPWEA conferences and events, with a goal to hear from your members what’s of interest to them, what their challenges are, and how I can build that into our forward work.

inspire: You’re co-chairing the Sustainable Assets Futures committee, which includes groups like IPWEA Vic, Sustainability Victoria, MAV, VicRoads, ARRB, Austroads, and the AAPA. What is the committee working on at the moment?

Burke: There’s a couple of pieces of work the committee’s taken on. One is looking at examples of where we’ve used recycled products or alternate products instead of natural resources. We have a group looking at good practice taking place in Australia and overseas, and how we can move towards modifying some of the standards to allow that to occur.

They’re working on looking at a knowledge bank of what has been done, what’s been successful and how we would move towards doing that more often.

The second area they’re looking at are the standards themselves. It was identified through IPWEA and some of the local governments that the VicRoads standards are likely over-specified for local applications, particularly low-traffic roads.

We’re looking at how we collectively come up with standards that are more appropriate for low-traffic roads, and then also the other side is to look at non-structural concrete standards. We think this will probably come up with more appropriate standards so they’re not overdesigned, which will also have the benefit of obviously less cost to construct but also less drain on natural resources again.

I expect the committee will release a summary of good practice and successful practice that’s out currently in industry. In addition, you’ll probably see a standards change and maybe some guidance notes.

It’s a difficult thing for someone to make a change without someone having the evidence to make that change. At the moment, we follow the current standards because it’s controlled and we know those standards work, so if we need to make a change, we need to do it in a sensible way to make sure there’s evidence behind it, we’ve understood what the implications of that change could be, and then we have a way of monitoring how that’s performing.

As part of this – I do welcome IPWEA members to reach out to me and provide examples where standards have been pushed, optimised, and driven toward ‘fit for purpose’ outcomes. I think these are examples of good engineering and do really need to be shared with the community.

inspire: Why is it important for the public works industry to use more renewable, recycled materials?

Burke: Firstly, because it makes so much sense. It’s crazy that we’re mining and quarrying materials, when we have near unlimited volumes of other materials that can be used nearly ‘in-kind’ with little to no cost or quality tradeoffs. Secondly, our solutions with these ‘waste’ products is simply not working – it makes so much sense that we find ways to use these waste products. Thirdly, using up virgin sources of materials is creating a potential shortage in other markets – not without impact. I see it as an engineer’s role to really challenge materials choice based on application. Sustainability of those materials is paramount.

In the past, there used to be this argument that recycled products attracted a cost premium.

While this was probably true then, it certainly isn’t now. I think the technology has developed so we can have confidence that these products perform as a substitute. A prime example of this is crumb rubber. For over 15 years we’ve really focused on rubber, and for the most part its proven now and in many cases it outperforms!

There’s quite good technology out there now to be able to test and predict how something is going to perform. In the past, you used to have to put materials down and build it into infrastructure and then watch it, so we’d watch an asphalt pavement for 10 or 20 years to see how it performed. Now, you actually can go and do predictive testing on that to give you confidence of how it will perform. Organisations like ARRB have such impressive accelerated testing methods that will provide any surfaces engineer confidence.

Alongside public works engineers, I think there is quite a lot of work that needs to be done with respect to local recyclable supply chains. Perhaps this is achieved through enhanced accountability and ownership of material collected from the curbside, investment into processing, enhanced collaboration, and joint ventures between councils. Either way, engineers across the board are in the driver’s seat for this revolution!

inspire: Do you think the committee’s findings will have application in other states?

Burke: For sure, and we’re certainly looking at examples of what’s been done interstate and overseas. It would need to be sort of considered for the different environments, and obviously we use more asphalt paving in Victoria, while more concrete paving is used in NSW, for example.

But certainly, when you get success happening in this area and people seeing it being successful and producing the benefits, you do seem to get momentum. It’s a lot easier for other states to take that approach off the back of that success and that framework.

inspire: How large a role do you see cadetships and graduate programmes playing in creating that talent pipeline?

Burke: It’s huge. Of the engineers going through courses now, maybe only 50% might get the opportunity to get work experience, so we want everybody to get work experience. There’s evidence to demonstrate that when you get work experience during the course, you not only perform better in your course, but you’re more prepared to start into industry when you graduate. And there’s at least, I think from what we’re seeing, 95% that get work experience get a job at the end. I think – particularly if we want to attract more people in and get the most out of their degrees and then also get a job – that cadetships and internships are huge.

In my mind, we’ve got young engineers in the latter years of their studies that are working at supermarkets. These are assets that are completely underutilised that we’ve all got the obligation to capture and uplift. Why do other professions – nurses, physios, doctors, lawyers – all have integrated work and internship frameworks while engineers do not? A huge opportunity for the engineering community.

inspire: What needs to happen to attract and retain more women in the industry?

Burke: A couple of the main priorities, we think, are particularly around diversity and inclusion. We need to look at how you give the right tools to organisations to help them make sure that they’ve got the right structure in place for inclusive work environments, correct behaviours and cultures being developed. This will hopefully lead toward ensuring we attract and retain more women.

Not only is attraction to the industry dismal, but we lose a huge percentage of women out of industry at about 10 years after they’ve completed their degree, and some of that because they want a change, or they’ve had children. How do we actually retain those women or bring them back into industry? We would like to see them continue in the industry and we want to retain our resources, so that’s quite a big area.

Flexibility is obviously a real big issue, and it’s not gender specific. These days, people have quite demanding lives and families that they look after, so being able to arrange their work in a flexible way is huge. The industry still has got to do a lot more to try and drive that culture of acceptability.

The last thing is health and wellbeing. We quite often talk about workplace health and safety, but we only usually focus on the safety, we don’t focus on the health so much. We’ve got so much work on and a shortage of resources, people are being asked to do more – how do you make sure they are supported? This industry is a tough industry, so we need to do a hell of a lot more to make sure that people are supported, they have the right access to any health and wellbeing program.

inspire: What would you say your hopes are for the engineers of the future? Where would you like to see the industry heading?

Burke: My hope for industry is greater connectivity, because I think there’s such great engineering that’s done, I think being able to connect in with others that have similar interests and needs to share so we all advance together.

I’d like engineers to be involved in all levels of decision-making around infrastructure, and assets, because I think they’ve got such knowledge, ability, skill and problem-solving ability.

I’d like to see more engineers at all levels. Unfortunately, you tend to find engineers aren’t necessarily in that policy-making side of things. We’re generally in the design and development delivery side, but not in the decision-making part.

Because of the amount of work going on at the moment and to make sure that government has the right advice and the right framework around decision, development and delivery, we certainly can benefit from greater numbers of engineers.

inspire: Collette, do you have any thoughts about the most important skills an engineer can have today?

Burke: An up-to-date knowledge of what’s happening out in industry, and a collaborative approach. I think really being able to collaborate instead of work in silos, and probably our skill that we’ll continue to use is the problem-solving ability.

Engineers have a fantastic ability to solve any problem. They don’t necessarily need all the answers, but they find a way of finding people with skill or whatever resources we need to put it to solve a problem.

The other tool of the engineer’s proverbial toolbox is to innovate. This doesn’t necessarily mean everything has to be bottoms-up ‘new’. Part of the engineer’s value proposition is to re-use where appropriate and innovate on the bits that make a difference. This comes out in so many ways: challenging standards, truly integrating sustainability by making use of materials that are already available, integrating sensors for predictive outcomes, and championing change in your own organisation.

In my mind – it really couldn’t be a more exciting time to be an engineer!