Maintenance Engineers from consulting, contracting and manufacturing businesses will attend an international conference being held, in part, at Central Queesland University Gladstone campus May 23 -24.

Organisers of the International Conference of Maintenance Societies (ICOMS - 2002) will use CQU's state of the art video conferencing technology to simultaneously host the event in Brisbane and Gladstone.

CQU Maintenance Management Director, Bryan Horton said that maintenance played an integral role in the success or failure of organisations and was currently a $20 billion industry in Australia.

"Today's maintenance managers must have an understanding of not only the equipment and technology employed, but also have the ability to lead organisational change.

"In the past, industries have relied upon procedures and structure to bring about change and have been unsuccessful because staff have ultimately reverted to old work patterns, philosophies and attitudes.

"ICOMS - 2002 will explore some of the approaches to changing and challenging the attitudes of production, maintenance, engineering and management within organisations.

"The conference will utilise real life examples and will include both international and Central Queesland based presenters.

Places are still available for the conference, which will begin Thursday 23 May. More details can be obtained by contacting Jo Rees, on 4970 7329.

The conference has been developed by the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia (MESA), a technical society of the Institution of Engineers Australia.