Skills eFlash #107
Date: 18-May-2022
In this edition: Water Skills Forum - Registration Closes Tomorrow| WIOA Awards - Young Operator of the Year and Civil/All-Rounder of the Year| Water Skills Meeting - 22 June 2022| Fundamentals Webinar - Rescheduled| Call for Topics - What would you like to see?| Skills Advocacy
1. Water Skills Forum - Registration Closes Tomorrow
Register now to secure your spot!
Our Water Skills Forum will be held at our Eagle Farm office on Thursday 2nd June 2022.
The forum will still proceed as a hybrid event so virtual registrations are available; however, we encourage you to attend the forum in person if you are able.
Graham Fraine, the Director General of Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water, has agreed to attend the last session to discuss industry skilling challenges and potential solutions.
The Forum will explore the Lifecycle of a Water Industry Worker, with three half-hour panel sessions exploring possible career paths, from ways to gain interest through pre-vocational opportunities to traineeships, graduate employment and industry co-investment models to entice postgraduate industry research. It also includes a session on a successful transition to retirement model.
The event will also include an “Attraction Hack” for a bit of fun but with a serious intent – to give us useful ideas to build awareness of the great opportunities in our industry. It’s your big chance to get creative and think outside the box.
Thank you to our sponsors TAFE Queensland and Simmonds and Bristow for their support of the upcoming forum.
Whether you can attend in person at our office in Eagle Farm or online, we look forward to welcoming you to the Water Skills Partnership signature annual event.
Please contact Naomi Carragher if you are interested in sponsoring this event.
2. WIOA Awards - Young Operator of the Year and Civil/All-Rounder of the Year
qldwater in conjunction with the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia (WIOA), is proud to once again sponsor the Young Operator of the Year and Operator of the Year (Civil) awards to recognise the outstanding operational performance of Queensland water industry employees.
The 2022 winners will be announced at the Queensland WIOA Annual Conference Awards Dinner on Wednesday 3 August at the Logan Metro Sports Centre.
Eligibility criteria and nomination forms can be found on the qldwater Awards page on our website.
Nominations close 30 June 2022.
3. Water Skills Meeting - 22 June 2022
In preparation for the Water Skills Meeting in June and the potential second round funding of the Queensland Governments ‘Back to Work’ initiative, the Growing Workforce Participation Fund, we’d like to invite members to brainstorm some ideas of projects and bring them to the meeting for discussion.
The current funding round is a one-off grant of $20,000 to $200,000 will be available to projects that meet the eligibility requirements.
Eligible projects are:
- projects that aim to increase labour market participation and engagement from the targeted groups under Back to Work
- pre-employment support projects
- workforce planning and/or development and associated resource development
- projects that address industry identified employment shortages.
There is a specific focus on groups of people who must benefit:
- young people (aged 15-24 years)
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- people with disability and
- long-term unemployed people (unemployed for 52 weeks or longer).
4. Fundamentals Webinar - Rescheduled
Thank you to those that attended the webinar on 21 April with Kathryn Turner. We apologise again for the technical difficulties that cut the webinar short.
The new date for Lagoon Management is 31 May 2022.
Registrations for the previous webinar are still active and we have reopened registration for the new date.
Previous webinar topics can be found here.
5. Call for Topics
qldwater would like to invite members to suggest topics for our Fundamentals webinars and Micro-Credentials.
Fundamentals webinars provide practical demonstrations of the most common water and wastewater treatment and network operations tasks, presented by industry experts.
The 2021/2022 Micro-Credentials was a non-accredited pilot program based on the knowledge components from units of competency from the National Water Training Package.
The three micro-credentials available were:
- Water Treatment Foundation Skills – an overview of the water treatment process, water quality risk, basic lab testing skills and basic chemical handling/safety.
- Wastewater Treatment Foundation Skills – an overview of the wastewater treatment process, environmental risks, basic sampling and testing, basic chemical handling/safety.
- Network Operations Foundation Skills – risk management, locating and protecting utilities, maintaining, and repairing network assets for water and wastewater, restoring a work site, installing trench support, or operating high pressure water jetting systems.
If there are topics you would like to see presented for either Fundamental webinars, as a Micro-Credentials or general discussion of either program please contact Anna Mehonoshen.
6. Skills Advocacy
qldwater through the Water Skills Partnership and in our role as an Industry Skills Advisor to the Department of Employment, Small Business and Training (DESBT) and as a member of the Water Industry Reference Committee, is regularly asked to provide input to policy and investment decisions to support the skilling and training needs of the Queensland water industry workforce. The following is an overview of recent and other related activities:
Anna Mehonoshen and Desire Gralton attended an Industry Skill Advisor Face to Face Workshop facilitated by the Department of Employment, Small Business and Training on 4 May.
The workshop agenda included DESBT divisional updates, Regional Directors presenting their top 5 industry priorities, National VET Reform + Industry perspective and VET in schools.
Water was a priority for the Far North Queensland region while Health & Community Services was in the top 5 of every region. We believe that we can work towards aligning with QLD Health sectors based on the relationship between water quality and community health.
A summary of the QLD Workforce Summit was given with a focus on future skills shortages in some industries. We asked the representative if there will be a strategy focused on the current industries, like water and wastewater, that are currently experiencing critical skills and employment shortages in regions, and they weren’t able to promise what it would look like but that it was being considered.
Several of the other industry skills advisors present talked about ‘gateway schools’, partnerships they have with secondary schools to deliver certificate courses or taster courses. This is not something that the water industry has, and we’d like to investigate. If you have had experience with tapping into the secondary school sector and would like to provide any feedback or ideas, please contact Anna Mehonoshen.