FLCWA’s new Chair Megan McCraken recently attended two major events including the Skills Summit and the Roads Australia Luncheon.

The new Chair Megan McCraken recently attended two major events including the Skills Summit and the Roads Australia Luncheon.

Skills Summit

WA Government Ministers joined industry leaders from a range of sectors – including the resources, construction, transport, agriculture, defence and healthcare industries – for the WA Skills Summit on 30th of July.

A number of Council members also attended this important event.

The Summit provided an opportunity for business leaders and other industry players to work collaboratively to develop immediate and longer term strategies to address skills needs impacting the Western Australian economy.

Themes included:

• incentives and further training for underutilised cohorts such as retirees, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, people with disability and women re-entering the workforce;
• increasing access to child care, including out of school hours care;
• immigration and quarantine strategies;
• targeted marketing campaigns for people interstate and under-represented groups in WA;
• various initiatives to recruit, upskill and retrain workers in the care industry;
• diversification of the economy to mitigate against boom and bust cycles;
• smoothing the pipeline of infrastructure projects;
• further collaboration and investment in training and skills pathways between industry, government and schools; and
• collecting more data on where current skills gaps are, and developing modelling to predict future skills shortages.

The Council looks forward to continuing working with the WA Government to progress new strategies in partnership with industry, meeting the challenges of building a stronger local workforce.

Roads Australia (RA)

RA hosted Doug Morgan, Acting Managing Director, Main Roads Western Australia as the featured speaker at their Perth Industry Lunch. Doug’s message focused on the WA project pipeline, road safety, infrastructure ready skills (including women, youth and aboriginal employment) & Indigenous engagement.

InfrastructureWA’s Draft Strategy

FLCWA joined stakeholders from multiple level of governments and industry leaders at the launch of Western Australia’s inaugural draft 20-year State Infrastructure Strategy.

The draft strategy is now available for public comment.

The FLCWA participated in a number of the InfrastructureWA’s strategy workshops last year, where we discussed multiple scenarios (such as global prosperity, divided world and green growth) and its implications on the infrastructure strategy.

The Draft Strategy is out for consultation until 15 September. We encourage FLCWA members and stakeholders to provide further feedback that will help to ensure our WA infrastructure needs for the future are met.