Page 34 - Australian Defence Magazine August 2018

STEM
SKILLS
Naval Shipbuilding College
Filling the gaps
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
On April 3 the Government announced that the Naval Shipbuilding Institute, a joint venture between Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) and US shipbuilding giant Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), was the preferred tenderer for the establishment of the Naval Shipbuilding College.
CONTRARY to the image conjured up by its name, the initiative isn’t actually a college or a university, nor does it aspire to training students in its own right. Rather, it is in- tended to identify and close gaps between what training courses are currently offered in the educational and training spaces and what the needs of the future naval shipyards are likely to be.
Funding to the tune of $62 million has been in recognition of the fact that a rapid ramp up of necessary skills will be needed to support the Government’s continuous shipbuilding program.
The program in essence kicks off this year, with the cutting of the first steel for the 12 Offshore Patrol Vessels being delivered under Sea 1180 and will con- tinue well in to the 2030s with fabrica- tion of the Future Frigates and Future Submarines.
What is the Naval
Shipbuilding College?
At the announcement in April, Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne ac- knowledged that a skilled naval shipbuild-
34 | August 2018 | www.australiandefence.com.au
GGETTY