Engineers Australia has called for urgent action to help counter the ‘unbalancing effect’ of the dramatic expansion of the resources sector within Western  Australia.

 

The group has warned that the continuing boom within the sector is destabalising the state’s economy, threatening its long-term viability.

 

Engineers Australia has published a report calling for a more inclusive and strategic approach, including fostering a long-term approach to innovation, developing a State-wide engineering capability plan to counter skills shortage and attracting more engineers from other States and overseas.

 

The report makes 14 key reccommendations as part of the group’s strategic vision to meet the State’s engineering workforce needs in 2020.

 

The report argues that, given the importance of engineering to the State, more must be done to ensure that the resources boom doesn’t compromise the engineering requirements of other sectors, such as that is already being experienced within the local government sector.

 

“While efforts are underway to graduate more engineers, WA will not produce sufficient numbers to meet the level of demand in the foreseeable future,” says Chris Fitzhardinge, a former president of the WA Division of Engineers Australia and a contributor to the report.

 

“The consequence of the shortages, coupled with the high Australian dollar and other factors, are causing increased costs for locally supplied engineering goods and services, loss of work to overseas countries and the postponement of projects due to a lack of economic viability”

 

The full report can be found here (PDF)