The BRS team attended the second Australian Engineering Conference 2016, organised by Engineers Australia and held in Brisbane, Australia. The conference focused on several different topics of information sharing and learning among engineers of all ages and disciplines. The topics focused on throughout the conference included leadership, defence, energy and transport.
Dr Finkel, speaking at 2016 Australian Engineering Conference
The team from BRS attended a few of the leadership seminars that were offered throughout the three-day event, hearing from industry leaders (including Dr Alan Finkel, Lt Gen David Morrison (Ret), Holly Ransom) sharing their insights and knowledge on a range of Engineering Leadership topics. Some of these topics included the role of engineers in the age of disruption, transitioning from engineering to leaders, and what keeps CEO’s up at night.
Holly Ransom motivating our future leaders at Australian Engineering Conference 2016
A key theme between the Engineering and Leadership seminars focused around the rise of the 4th Industrial revolution sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0. This industrial revolution is described as the rise of automation, cyber-physical systems, the internet of things and cloud computing to name a few. An interesting insight taken from these seminars was that a large percentage (above 70%) of young children in early years of schooling will be working in jobs that do not yet exist. The importance of STEM jobs to Australia’s future is clearly evident.
Dr Andrew Harris speaks of the probability of job losses through automation at Australian Engineering Conference 2016
Another topic that was very popular at the conference was Energy. Some of the main focuses during the seminars attended by BRS included renewable energy and energy security. It was extremely interesting to hear facts from leading industry engineering experts about the recent events that unfolded in South Australia during their state blackout. One main point of note was that the renewable energy portion of supply to South Australia performed exactly as intended under the circumstances that arose which is in stark contrast to what was widely reported in main stream media during the event.
It was interesting to see progression in Australia’s energy security position since attending the Inaugural Australian Engineering Conference 2014. Although some important steps have been taken towards increasing Australia’s Energy Security, it is evident that this there is still quite a lot of work required to get this to a level that Australia will be comfortable with.
BRS also attended the networking event that was organised during the conference. It was fantastic to network with like-minded professionals, catch up with old friends and even mingle with some of our old lecturers!
The BRS team can’t wait until the 2018 conference in Sydney! A big thanks to Engineers Australia for hosting a great event.