Concern raised on recruitment shortages as youth stars during event
Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia (HVIA) celebrated its first Southern Region Awards event on Friday night, including the inaugural presentation of three new awards.
Against a backdrop across Docklands to Port Phillip Bay, the event was presented by HVIA key partner National Transport Insurance (NTI) and TruckAssist, at the Victorian headquarters of HVIA Insights partner KPMG.
HVIA chief executive Todd Hacking tells attendees that the suite of new leadership and innovation awards acknowledges their role in enabling the Australian heavy vehicle industry to provide innovative solutions for the road transport task.
The winners are:
- Product Innovation Award: Bulk Transport Equipment (BTE) – steerable semi agitator
- Southern region and north west region Community leadership Award: MaxiTrans – Support for RU OK Day and food distribution for Soup Bus and SecondBite; Cummins South Pacific – Technical Education in Communities (TEC) Project
- National Apprentice of the Year sponsored by Warby Tools: Keegan Templeton – Cummins South Pacific Victoria
- Peter Langworthy Future Leader finalist: Maddy Wahrbichler – Cummins South Pacific Victoria.
Along with recognising the efforts of industry participants, some important issues were touched on during the night.
It was made plain during the acceptance speech that despite its keenness to train young engineers, BTE is struggling on the recruitment front.
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“We do have a big problem moving forward with labour, with apprentices. We haven’t got an apprentice on our floor at the moment,” BTE director Alan Griffiths says.
“Five years ago, we had 15 people when we moved into new premises. We’ve 70 now but we haven’t got one apprentice because we couldn’t find anyone who was interested.
“It’s a real shame. Everybody needs to get behind it because, I’ll tell you what, in another five to 10 years, we’re going to be stuffed.
“If we don’t come up with something more creative other than importing stuff, we’re really going to have some big problems.
“We need to find some way of getting young guys into the industry. It’s dirty, it pays well and it’s good fun.”
On the plus side, some of those who are attracted to the industry have shown exemplary focus on improvement.
A certificate 3 apprentice with Cummins South Pacific Victoria and close to completing his apprenticeship despite having come to the industry without a related background, Templeton finished all his off-the-job training six months early.
A national award, The Peter Langworthy Future Leader Award is a new one aimed at young employees demonstrating outstanding leadership in their organisations.
Wahrbichler and others will be flown up to attend the national event on November 16.
Taken on as a trainee heavy vehicle diesel technician in 2016, she was promoted to customer service advisor the following year and now leads her branch’s community involvement team.