Uni's rapid response to protect Australia's prosperity
Published on 16 August, 2011
With billion-dollar projects at stake and an industry peak body crying out for urgent assistance, CQUniversity has pulled out all stops to propose project management programs geared to our massive resource and infrastructure sectors...
With nothing suitable available off the shelf, the University has acted swiftly with proposals to ensure a pipeline of project managers able to cope with these vital developments.
Pro Vice-Chancellor (Community and Engagement) Dr Pierre Viljoen responded to pleas by the Mackay Area Industry Network and gained encouragement from Vice-Chancellor Professor Scott Bowman.
LINK to New 'project' course set to underpin prosperity, Rockhampton session soon
He assembled a rapid-response team of academic leaders including Associate Professor Alan McPhail, Professor Graham Pegg, Professor Kevin Tickle, Professor Roger March and Professor Gopinath Chattopadhyay. Dr Viljoen also engaged help from Richard Egelstaff, a CQUniversity academic with first-hand experience of coordinating huge infrastructure projects.
The first intake of students is proposed in November, with qualifications available at 'graduate certificate', 'graduate diploma' and 'masters' levels.
Mr Egelstaff, who had a pivotal role pulling together the consortium behind the billion-dollar Nextgen project, says Australia's balance of trade is at stake as billion-dollar projects are likely to collapse or go overseas without the skills to bring them to fruition in Australia.
"We don't have a monopoly on resources," he says. "If we cannot execute a project efficiently and effectively within the constraints then we're in trouble."
"These projects can't be run remotely from interstate or overseas. We need people on the ground who know how to run them with high-level thinking at a local level."
Mr Egelstaff says 'sophisticated' project management skills are vital to protect the linchpin of Australia's prosperity.
"We'll be undercut by other resource regions around the world if we don't get our act together.
"If we get it right we can guarantee Australia's prosperity. If not, the good times could come to and end within a decade or so. This is an historic opportunity but best-practice project management must underpin our approach.
"We need to provide skills so people are aligned to Central Queensland as the prosperity engine of Australia. We don't need courses which have been developed for IT or corporate services or those piggbacking on American case studies.
"CQUniversity's movers and shakers have mobilised and fast-tracked this proposed inter-disciplinary course. We hope it will be only nine months from conception in March to the first students coming on line in November."