Defence Business: ADM’s Workforce Participation Summit highlights | ADM November 2012

The annual ADM’s Workforce Participation Summit, the seventh in the series, began with some dire words from Minister for Defence Materiel Jason Clare. But there were positives as well!

“There is a valley of death,” he said. “It exists between the end of the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) Program and the start of work on the Future Submarine. It’s a valley where jobs are lost and skills disappear. We need to build a bridge across this valley of death.”

At the conference last year Clare outlined how the Future Submarine Project was the largest challenge Australian industry has to climb.

“It’s the biggest and most complex project we have ever embarked upon. To build 12 Future Submarines we need to build skills not lose them. If we lose the skills we are building now on the AWD Project it will only make the task of building these submarines harder.”

The industry has seen such valleys of death before. The gap between the Anzac Frigate Project and the AWD Project is a good example. It led to a loss in skills and productivity – and that has been felt on the AWD Project (type in AWD in the search function at www.australiandefence.com.au to see ADM’s coverage of the program to date).

“It takes a long time to rebuild these sorts of skills,” Clare said. “Productivity on the AWD Project has improved, but it has taken time. We can’t let this happen again. Not in preparation for a project as large and complicated as the Future Submarine Project.”

The Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan was announced by government in December last year in order to address this issue as planning for this mammoth program comes together. In May this year Clare announced David Mortimer AO would head up the Expert Industry Panel to develop this plan. The panel is a who’s who of Australian shipbuilding companies.

The Panel also includes:

• Andrew Bellamy – Austal

• David Allott – BAE System

• Steve Ludlam – ASC

• Tony Lobb – Forgacs

• Chris Jenkins – Thales Australia

• Kim Gillis – Boeing Australia

• Michael Ward – Raytheon Australia Pty Ltd

• Raydon Gates – Lockheed Martin

• Richard Price – Saab Systems

• Gonzalo Mateo-Guerrero – Navantia Australia

• Paul Bastian – AMWU

• Graham Priestnall – AIDN

• John O’Callaghan – AIG Defence Group

• As well as a number of representatives from other Government departments.

“Their job is to help design a bridge across the valley of death,” Clare explained. The changes to the AWD delivery schedule were explained in further detail at the Summit. These changes won’t cross the valley of death but they do help to make a difference in the skills gap that could emerge if not carefully managed. The changes recently made to the AWD project have helped, Clare said.

Industry programs

Clare also updated the audience on a number of ongoing initiatives that are aimed at helping industry maintain a sustainable workforce well into the future. The SADI program (Skilling Australia’s Defence Industry) has more than 100 companies involved this year – sharing $8.5 million in training.

The Government has allocated $14 million so far to the Global Supply Chain Program to assist Australian companies compete for work with the multinational Defence companies. In the past 12 months 30 contracts have been signed valued at $53.59 million. To date 46 companies have won 174 contracts worth over $460 million with about 90 per cent of the value going being awarded to small to medium enterprises.

The PIC Innovation Program has also helped nine companies, seven of which are SMEs, with $12.1 million in funding. The findings of six PIC health checks have now been publicly released. These are Combat Clothing, Ship Dry Docking and Common User Facilities, Infantry Weapons, Acoustic Technologies and Systems, Signature Management, and Through-Life and Real Time Support of Mission Critical and Safety Critical Software.

Health checks for High Frequency and Phase Array Radar, Remote Weapons Stations, Electronic Warfare and In-Service Support of Collins Combat System have been drafted and are now undergoing stakeholder review.

All remaining initial PIC health checks will be released by late 2012/early 2013, Clare said.

“Last year at this conference I also announced that I had commissioned Skills Australia to map out the range and depth of the skills we have, the skills we need, and how best to build them,” Clare said. “Today I can release this report.

“It contains 33 recommendations, including:

• Development of a Defence Skills Centre of Excellence, that includes the appointment of a Group Training Organisation to manage an apprenticeship program for Defence industry;

• Establishment of scholarships and cadetship programs for a range of specialist occupations;

• Requiring all companies bidding for Defence projects to submit workforce development plans; and

• Further changes to the SADI program.

“This is an important report. It will help shape the development of Defence Industry Policy. Next year we will re lease a new Defence White Paper, and we will also release a new Defence Industry Policy Statement. It will leverage off this report from Skills Australia and the report of the Future Submarine Industry Skills Plan.”

The day had a definite focus on the maritime sector of Defence industry given the range of vessels on the horizon in the coming decade.

Director General of the Defence Learning Branch Brigadier Peter Gates spoke of the challenge of getting the right skills at the right place at the right time given the constraints the organisation faces as the biggest challenge to be addressed.

He cited flexibility and agility as key factors and acknowledged that there will be times when there will be some overskilling once drawdowns occur in parts of Defence (post Afghanistan and other peacekeeping operations scale down) as well as keeping basic skills intact for ‘just in case’ scenarios.

As an observer of the Defence community, Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Andrew Davies was keen to point out that the rhetoric coming out of government and defence is great but the dollars are not. The case for cooperation with other friendly navies for ships is an option but many nations are also struggling to keep their sovereign shipbuilding interests flush with work.

The different approaches to apprentice programs were also interesting to note. While Thales Australia uses a company called Electro Group to source their apprentices, ASC recruits them directly into the company. There were also lessons learned case studies on recruitment and retention of the next generation of blue-collar workers.

The first recommendation of the Skills Australia report released by Jason Clare earlier that day was Recommendation 1.1 encourages Defence and Defence industry to raise the profile of the Defence Industry as a career option – providing secondary school students with a taste of careers in the Defence industry. More companies are opening their doors to students through a range of programs such as F1 in Schools, UAV Challenge and various open days, mainly through various trade shows.

Transition

Transition between school and industry is an important one for industry. The transition of military people into industry is another important factor. Managing director of Trans-Civ Paul Smith spoke about how his company specialises in supporting this transition.

The institutionalisation of long-term defence personnel can mean that while they have a wide range of skills, they can lack the skills to communicate this with recruiters and during interviews. While defence companies tend to understand this, there are many sectors that may struggle to identify the pluses that ex-defence personnel may bring to the workplace.

New Deputy Secretary Defence People Carmel McGregor spoke of the challenges that women in defence, both in and out of uniform, face. Of the 120 senior committee seats in Defence, eight are held by women, and two are the same person. The recent culling and reorganisation of defence committees has also seen this already small number fall. The importance of gender diversity on these boards cannot be underestimated, McGregor said. Work is being done within the organisation to help address this imbalance but it is slow and steady.

With a slightly different focus this year on participation, the audience was able to hear from Defence Health’s Chris Grigsby who spoke on dealing with workers who have a chronic illness or are returning to work from an injury.

These are conditions that cannot be cured but can be managed, anything from arthritis through to mental health conditions. People with chronic diseases tend to be older but still have much to offer the workforce if given flexibility to manage their workflow and tasks.

As Thales’ HR director for Maritime & Aerospace pointed out most technical problems can be solved in the end but the people ones are harder and sometimes cannot be fixed. Investing in the right people can make or break a business.