Page 160 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

FROM THE SOURCE
REAR ADMIRAL PETER QUINN
Continued from page 158
is a strong collaboration between all of the federal government departments, the states and territories and local authorities to make sure that we get those capabilities on time. We need to approximately qua- druple the size of our shipbuilding work- force over the next five years or so and the sort of workforce that we need is one that is in high demand; the skilled project manag- ers and schedulers, people who are skilled in computer aided design, people that are used to working with very high technology.
The new frigate yard that we’re building is the most advanced shipyard in the world and the new submarine yard will be equal- ly advanced – both built from first princi- ples. They are Industry 4.0, absolutely 21st century yards that will have industrial ro- bots and people working together to build ships and submarines in smarter ways than we have ever done.
I think as we get the word out there about the national shipbuilding program, the concept of what shipbuilding is going to be
like in the context of the Hunters, Attacks and the Arafuras, with truly digital ship- yards our excitement about this huge op- portunity for Australia will spread. It will be people teamed with machines to build these ships. It’s really exciting for people who might be thinking of embarking in a career in shipbuilding to know we’re at the absolute leading edge in this space.
ADM: You’ve discussed two opposing trends; these shipyards are going to be the most advanced in the world with more au- tomation than ever before, yet at the same time we have to quadruple the size of our shipbuilding workforce in the next five years. What are we doing to make sure we can generate that workforce?
QUINN: If we were building ships the way we built them last century you’d need an even bigger workforce and we would be much less efficient than we intend to build our new vessels. You will still have a lot of people but the jobs that they are do- ing now, and certainly in five years' time, are going to continue to evolve and they’re
going to be a lot more advanced than even what we did in building our new de- stroyers. People will be working with the absolute latest generation of networked computer-controlled plasma cutters, weld- ers, plate and pipe benders and the latest generation of advanced combat systems and sensor design – so shipbuilding will a really exciting Industry 4.0 world.
But the workforce still needs to grow very significantly because we’re going to continuously build ships and a rolling de- livery of submarines.
So you need a fairly substantial work- force associated with that. I think the na- ture of the work will change but the sort of skills that they will have will be evolved to that next generation of industrial work- force, with solid underpinnings of more traditional roles too. There will still be people who will need to be expert plumb- ers, electricians, boilermakers and weld- ers but increasingly those people will be working with very high levels of technol- ogy alongside their foundation skills.
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