Ask any Western Australian-based engineer – electrical, structural, mechanical, civil, or another speciality branch – about their industry’s current vibrancy and you’re likely to hear Paul Keating’s famous quip: “This is as good as it gets”.
Ask any Western Australian-based engineer – electrical, structural, mechanical, civil, or another speciality branch – about their industry’s current vibrancy and you’re likely to hear Paul Keating’s famous quip: “This is as good as it gets”.
WA’s mining and infrastructure engineering and design sectors have never been as active, and it’s been that way for at least 18 months, with no end in sight.
The reasons are two-fold; mining – especially across the Pilbara, but also the Goldfields, Mid-West (Geraldton’s hinterland), and south of Perth – plus ongoing expansion of the North West Shelf’s off-shore natural gas, condensate and oil reserves.
It’s not being jingoistic to paraphrase John Soule’s famous line by saying: “Go West young men and young women”, since that’s where the work is. And Perth has four engineering schools plus two supporting technical colleges.
Few Australians outside WA appreciate the number and magnitude of resource projects being undertaken across the continent’s western third.
Only one currently planned Pilbara energy project, BHP Billiton’s Stybarrow oil development, is priced at less than $1 billion – a mere $850 million.
Another of BHPB’s projects – its Onslow LNG plant – carries a $5 billion tag, less than half of nearby Chevron’s $11 billion Gorgon gas/condensate joint venture.
But the Pilbara and offshore waters aren’t home only for big corporate names.
New WA miner, Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), is completing a port facility at Port Hedland to berth ore carriers up to 270,000 tonnes, a mine, and a 255-kilometre railroad, valued at $1.4 billion.
Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan and FMG founder and CEO Andrew Forrest turned the ceremonial sod in February.
FMG is currently employing 160 engineers to design this and has contracts with three of China’s top 10 steel mills. Belgian maritime engineering group, Jan de Nul, is doing the dredging, with ore exports due to begin by Christmas 2007.
On April 19, Burrup Fertilisers commissioned its $700 million Karratha-based liquid ammonia plant to supply Indian customers and other markets.
The latest issue of the state government’s resources bi-monthly, Prospect, says: “WA continues to lead the way as Australia’s No.1 resources investment destination, with more than $67 billion worth of projects either under way or planned.”
According to WA Business News’ latest research in the 2006 Book of Lists, the state’s top 20 engineering and construction firms employ 5,100 engineers within a combined staff of 9,500.
Membership of WA’s division of The Institution of Engineering (aka, Engineering Australia) stands at 7,500, about a third of all classes of engineers practising statewide.
Perth-headquartered engineering giant, WorleyParsons, has a workforce of 1,800, 1,300 of these engineers.
Not included are those on payrolls with WorleyParsons partners.
Senior WorleyParsons consultant Walter Cohn said engineering design work was being driven by ongoing demand for minerals and gas, with work since late 2004 35 per cent above that undertaken during 1995-2004.
“And I’m talking of work in progress, not hopes and aspirations or planned work,” Mr Cohn said.
Many mid-1960s graduates who planned retiring last or this year are still working because of marked boosts in remuneration packages to stay on.
Companies beseech staffers to contact overseas and interstate engineering colleagues to ask them to relocate to WA.
Sizeable spotter fees are paid to staffers and staff poaching is rife.
Engineering ranks have swelled with recruits from the UK, South Africa, Chile, and even Iran.
Third-year engineering students undertaking obligatory three-month practical vacation stints in the field often don’t return to complete final years because employers’ packages are too tempting to consider returning to academe.
The profession abounds with such stories.
All are enjoying this full employment. Annual salaries easily exceed $100,000, with first-year graduates commanding around $50,000, levels that only dental, medical and optometry graduates exceed.
To retain graduates, employers are increasingly offering packages that include guaranteed overseas postings to their branch offices after set periods in Perth or at sites outside the city, plus professional and career development.
They’re the good tidings.
Engineers are the first to tell aspirants that slumps come.
But no-one sees such an eventuality on the horizon, which means school leavers who opted for engineering and related university courses chose well.
That’s how things are expected to remain until 2010, after which it’s anyone’s guess, with continued expansion likely.
In terms of tertiary and further education, each of Perth’s four state universities offers degree courses leading to careers in the mining or resource sector, even if they do not carry the word mining in their designation.
Planning, design, construction, and operating mines requires a growing range of engineering skills, including environmental engineering.
The engineering student breakdown is: University of WA, 2,300; Curtin University of Technology, 2,500; Murdoch University, 250; and Edith Cowan University (ECU), 170.
However, this nearly 5,500-strong student body is seen as insufficient to meet projected needs, since up to 30,000 Australian engineers will retire by 2016, according to Engineers Australia’s WA president John Phillips.
“This will lead to a shortage since they are currently the mainstay of the engineering profession having graduated in the 1960s and 1970s,” Mr Phillips said.
Perth’s central and Fremantle-based Challenger Tafe colleges each has about 1,000 students under-taking recognised engineering courses and related ancillary technical disciplines.
Hundreds of mining and engineering oriented subjects are offered by the universities, the Kalgoorlie-based WA School of Mines and both Tafe colleges.
ECU’s School of Engineering and Mathematics is the youngest and focuses on computer and communi-cations systems, one of the mining sector’s specialist operational areas.
Engineering, of course, covers an array of traditional and a vast number of newly emerged related disciplines and specialities.
For example, ECU’s bachelor of engineering (electronic security) includes analog electronics, signals and systems, and propagation and antennas.
Similar specialities exist within other engineering bachelors degrees offered by Perth’s other universities.
Murdoch’s School of Electrical and Process Engineering is based at Rockingham, near HMAS Stirling, and at its metropolitan campus.
It specialises in offering engineering that focuses on power, industrial computer systems, instrumentation and control, renewable energy and environment.
Curtin’s engineering faculty offers chemical, civil, electrical and computer and mechanical engineering and currently has 2,250 students and 250 postgraduates enrolled. Nearly 500 are from overseas. A bachelor of technology and double degree programs are also offered.
UWA, through its Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, offers each of the traditional engineering disciplines plus a range of sub-sets, including, ocean systems and petroleum engineering.
