MARKET PULSE: The last thing engineers and related consultants want to think about – or hear about – is politics. But as the world shifts under everyone’s feet right now the changes being sheeted home to the business case is unnerving the most stoic in the industry.
A few months ago we were talking about the enormous and dire shortages of highly skilled specialists in engineering.
In the past week we hear these specialists are getting harder to keep in the company, or at home! They’re moving to other industries and other countries: the Middle East is particularly appealing.
You’ll get that when firms have positioned themselves to do a lot of transport work over a decade or so in places such as New South Wales and Victoria, and then the work dries up, says Consult Australia chief executive Jonathan Cartledge.
In some ways that shift is a political response, we offer. Not long ago these state governments were being hammered for not putting enough investment into transport and other infrastructure projects. Now even rail is being seen as wasteful.
Trouble is, Cartledge says, when you’ve lost highly skilled specialised staff, it’s hard to get them back.
“There’s big skills you build up in projects like the Metro that you build up over a decade,.”
There’s disruptions in work trajectories around the country.
Right now Queensland might be the hot spot for growth given the flows of people heading north to escape high prices down south and chase emerging opportunities. Problem, is the new Crisafulli government has implemented a 100 day review of big projects such as in energy and the Olympics. Normally that’s a wise thing to do but meanwhile people are twiddling their thumbs.
But as work dries up in NSW and Victoria, Western Australia is doing well in attracting attention; South Australia, not so much, even though it has big projects under way.
Cartledge says what’s concerning his members and the broader industry is the prospect of a hung parliament after the imminent federal election. People want certainty, he says, especially in energy.
“Sustainability and climate and energy each need enabling regulatory settings,” he says.
“The mood in the market right now is uncertainty. People are holding back.”
And with the long term pipeline of projects that are supposed to come to market the question is, are these commitments going to translate to the procurement and tender phase?
Who knows?
Equally discombobulating for other engineering and consulting stalwarts is the absolutely clear move away from building regulations, towards a kind of free for all, evidenced by a kind of ideological virus making its way around the country and paying no heed at all to the fact that most people in the built environment have lobbied for ever to get consistent harmonious regulations that advances the industry as one.
The zealotry of those advancing a deregulated built environment is reminiscent of teenagers suddenly let loose in the liquor cabinet. The underlying assumption – from adults no less – is that to deregulate the biggest investment most of us will ever make and probably the most important in terms of protecting us from a hostile environment is that this free-for-all is intrinsically a good thing. And that it’s not at all based on the spurious views that some pollie or other picked up while helping out with the pamphleteering at the Heritage Foundation during a stint in the US (this is the place where the plans to take over absolute government using Trump was hatched.)
In New Zealand the Green Building Council’s chief executive Andrew Eagles told us in our How to Build a Better World podcast that this new ideological bent of the NZ government (“We are not the government of regulation”) has resulted in apartments measuring 50 degrees in the day and 30 degrees at night.
This, with the nightmare of getting strata agreements onto the table for say, some ameliorating features such as sun shades – no easy feat if you know anything about how groups of amateurs donating their precious time tend to veer.
The irony is that nearly the whole industry is telling the government it wants regulation.
Politics also played a part in the anti woke, anti-DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movement that engineering companies have had to deal with.
One source’s rather large company – with nearly 1000 staff – felt obliged to look at the trashing DEI was getting from “the media and Trump” and said that his team concluded: “No, these are our values and we’ve had them for a long time.”
Getting more women into engineering for a start, was absolutely a good thing, he said. It was great to see more female participation. His team, at least, was sticking to the plan.