Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshops - Wednesday, 30^th May 2012

All pre-conference workshops will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre commencing at 08:30 - 17:00. The pre-conference workshop are all priced at $550 each and includes lunch, morning & afternoon tea. Please book via the online registration form.

Conference delegates only may book on these workshops due to limited numbers (maximum 25 per pre-conference workshop).

1. Beyond Presentation Skills 101
This workshop will provide strategies and techniques for engineering professionals, team leaders and senior executives to communicate with more clarity and impact. The workshop will focus on presenting in workplace contexts such as the Boardroom, leadership meetings, team meetings, project meetings and seminars. Participants will take away improved performance levels in preparation and delivery, along with practical tools to utilise in the workplace. There will be none of the dreaded role plays commonly used in presentation skills training. The focus is on each participant gaining self-confidence and lowering self-consciousness.

Presenter: Barry O'Sullivan

2. Business Acumen
In today's turbulent and challenging business environment, engineers need to have more than technical ability to succeed, they also need business savvy. They need a good understanding of the financial dynamics of business; how economic value is created and how business leaders (and shareholders) keep score.
This one day business acumen training deals with how non-financial variables (especially decisions and actions) affect financial variables, and how the financial variables are interrelated. A particular focus is on how to identify and action profit creating opportunities.

Presenter: Geoff Rip

3. Managing Self and Others

This course is about gaining an understanding of your management style and behaviours in order to effectively manage others. It takes participants through the performance management cycle, providing practical solutions to managing and leading people in a diverse workplace. It outlines the importance of communication and leadership skills in building and sustaining relationships and provides opportunities to practise giving immediate and ongoing feedback. A particular focus on case studies, examples and scenarios to enhance learning.

Presenter: Grace O'Malley

Workshops taking place during the Conference Program

All workshops listed below are being held in the Adelaide Convention Centre and are included in the full delegate registration fee. Please note, we require your indication via the online registration form as to which workshop(s) you will be attending.

Limit of two per delegate due to expected high demand (maximum 80 per conference workshop).

4. Transitioning from Manager to Leader

This workshop focuses on the transition from manager to leader. This transition often occurs with no, or very few, formalised training programs in the new skill sets required. This workshop provides a brief introduction to a leadership coach's guide to moving from technical excellence to leadership excellence and includes leadership time management, developing self managing teams, using a coaching style and leading change.

Presenter: Barry O'Sullivan
Date: Thursday, 31 May 2012

5. How to keep your stakeholders happy
This workshop focuses on practical insights and activities to ensure that stakeholders important to you and your organisation are 'kept happy'. Whether they be clients/customers (internal or external), suppliers, agencies, leaders, other teams, peers or the general community, it's the case for most of us that successful engagement with these stakeholders is a key to our own outcomes being achieved. This workshop identifies and explains the four keys to successful engagement with stakeholders, as well as providing practical tools to use back in your workplace.

Presenter: Barry O'Sullivan
Date: Thursday, 31 May 2012

6. Leading Teams

This workshop outlines some practical solutions to managing and leading people in a diverse workplace. It outlines the importance of communication and leadership skills in building and sustaining relationships, with a focus on case studies to reinforce the learning.

Presenter: Grace O'Malley
Date: Thursday, 31 May 2012

7. Negotiation Skills

Negotiation is an art form, it is an essential tool for any engineer and getting the best outcome is not the only thing you need to consider.

In this session we will explore the seven principles that can make negotiation successful

Presenter: Adam Le Good
Date: Friday, 1 June 2012

8. Influencing Skills

Influencing others is an essential life skill. It is easy to learn and hard to master. It is not manipulation and this session will give you some tools to improve your positive influence skills in the workplace and in your life generally.

Presenter: Adam Le Good
Date: Friday, 1 June 2012

The Honourable Tim Fischer AC

Ex Deputy Prime Minister and now the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, Tim Fischer has earned an enviable reputation as a prominent Australian with a passion for regional Australia. A noted 'railfan' he has a lifetime of interest in rail systems and engineering. In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and served as Chairman of the ATSE Crawford Fund supporting international agricultural research from 2001 to 2006.

Mr Fischer will keynote at the ELC2012 when he will impart his thoughts on how the engineering community will face the challenges of regional Australia and how engineers will demonstrate leadership in development.

An enlightening and engaging speaker, his address is not to be missed.

Ian Tyler

Ian Tyler (50) is a graduate of Birmingham University and a chartered accountant, qualifying with Arthur Andersen in London. He joined Balfour Beatty in 1996 as Finance Director, was appointed Chief Operating Officer in August 2002 and became Chief Executive in January 2005.

From 1993-1996 he was Finance Director of ARC Limited, one of the principal subsidiaries of Hanson Plc, the international building materials company, having previously been Hanson's Group Financial Comptroller (1991-1993). Prior to that, from 1988-1991, he held the positions of Group Treasurer and Financial Controller at Storehouse Plc, the retailing group.

Ian Tyler was born on 7 July 1960. He is married with two daughters.

He is a Non-Executive Director of Cable and Wireless Communications Plc and is President of CRASH, the charity for homeless people around the UK.

NB: The international infrastructure services company, Balfour Beatty Plc, which has operations covering the UK, Europe, the US, South-East Asia, Australia and the Middle East, and is the parent company of Parsons Brinckerhoff, will be represented by either its CEO, Ian Tyler or its Chief Operating Officer, Andrew McNaughton.

Andrew McNaughton

Andrew joined Balfour Beatty in 1997 after spending 12 years with the Kier Group. A steady career progression within Balfour Beatty has seen Andrew become Head of Engineering within Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd (BBCEL), Project Director on Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Operations Director, Technical Services Director, BBCEL Infrastructure Services Division General Manager before becoming Managing Director of Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Limited in October 2004. In April 2007, he became Group Managing Director of Balfour Beatty Plc, responsible for Civil Engineering in the UK and Middle East. In January 2009, he became Chief Operating Officer of Balfour Beatty Plc, responsible for directing the construction and engineering activities in the UK, the Gulf Region and South-East Asia and for the worldwide rail business outside of the US.

In 2006, Andrew became a Freeman of the City of London and a Liveryman in the Worshipful Company of Engineers.

In 2010, he was elected Vice President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Craig Laslett

As Managing Director of Leighton Contractors, Craig Laslett heads an organisation of over 12,000 employees delivering hundreds of diverse projects worth almost $12billion of work-in-hand.

During his 28 years with Leighton Contractors, Craig has worked in civil and building construction, process and mining and in most geographical regions in which the company operates. Prior to his current appointment, Craig led Leighton Contractors' Resources Division. A whole-of-mine service delivery business incorporating HWE Mining and Leighton Mining, the division is recognised as Australia's largest mining contractor with more than 5,000 people and revenues of about $2billion a year.

As a qualified and highly experienced civil engineer, Craig is proud of his directorship of technically complex and challenging projects, such as the Spencer Street Station in Melbourne and the Inner City Bypass in Brisbane; while the enduring relationships he has forged and his successes in negotiating long term multi-billion dollar contract partnerships form the basis of many career highlights. In 2011 Craig was recognised as one Australia's 100 most influential engineers.

A passionate and focused leader, Craig is committed to further developing the success of Leighton Contractors around its core values.

Jillian Kilby

Jillian Kilby is a Civil Engineer who established her own Company in 2009 between Walgett and Brewarrina in North West NSW. Jillian is passionate about providing quality project engineering services to local councils and private consultants in the area of civil infrastructure and development. Prior to starting her own company, Jillian worked for Waterway Constructions as a Project Manager of construction.

Jillian is the National Young Professional Engineer of the Year and past Chairman of the Civil and Structural Panel of Engineers Australia Sydney Division. Jillian is a Director of the Royal Agricultural Society Foundation and completed a Bachelor of Civil Engineering with First Class Honours at The University of Sydney.

Tanya Monro

Professor Tanya Monro is an ARC Federation Fellow and Director of the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS) at the University of Adelaide. The vision of IPAS is to pursue a transdisciplinary research agenda, bringing together physics, chemistry and biology to create knowledge and disruptive new technologies, and solve problems for health, defence, the environment, food and wine. She is also the Director of the Centre of Expertise in Photonics (CoEP) within the School of Chemistry & Physics at the University of Adelaide. The Centre, in partnership with DSTO, develops new optical fibres for defence, sensing, nonlinear optics and fibre lasers.

Tanya is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), a member of the Future Manufacturing Industry Innovation Council (FMIIC), a member of the SA Premier's Science & Research Council and an inaugural Bragg Fellow of the Royal Institution of Australia. She is South Australia's "Australian of the Year" for 2011. In 2010 she was named South Australian Scientist of the Year, and was named Telstra Business Women of the Year at both National and State levels (in the Community & Government category). In 2009 Tanya was named the Emerging Leader in the Science category in The Weekend Australian Magazine's Emerging Leader awards. In 2008 she won the Prime Minister's Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, in 2007-2008, she was the 'Women in Physics Lecturer' for the Australian Institute of Physics. In 2006 she was presented with a Bright Spark Award by Cosmos Magazine.

Tanya obtained her PhD in physics in 1998 from The University of Sydney, for which she was awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for the best Physics PhD in Australia in that year. In 2000, she received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton in the UK. She came to the University of Adelaide in 2005 as inaugural Chair of Photonics. She has published over 350 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings, and has raised over $65M for research. As well as being active in research and research leadership, she serves on international, national and state committees and boards on matters of science and research policy and science evaluation and assessment.

Tim Dalmau

Tim Dalmau has worked in a variety of positions in private enterprise and higher education. In the last 33 years he has worked primarily as a consultant to large corporates in the public and private sectors. His work experience with clients covers, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, The Philippines, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA.

He is regarded as one of Australia's foremost management and leadership consultants. He is the author or co-author of an extensive selection of books, handbooks, and other publications widely used by senior executives and change practitioners. His practice covers working with Boards and senior executive teams to design systems for change and improvement in the resources, engineering, financial services and health sectors.

His skill and experience base covers senior executive coaching, performance reviews, alignment and engagement of executive teams, reviews and consulting to establish best fit of strategy structure and culture; strategic analysis of organizational functioning.

Conference MC - Gerry Gannon

Following a 10-year career as a journalist and broadcaster with ABC Radio, Gerry Gannon left to pursue a career that would bring him closer to audiences and allow him to explore parts of the world he could not do from a radio studio. He spent a time in PR, which allowed him the opportunity to travel and to get to know the business sector both in Australia and SE Asia. It was at this time that he established Indonesia's first English language radio station in Bali for a Perth/Indonesian joint venture partnership.

He also took an interest in the not-for-profit sector and was elected to the Council of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and served as President for two years. He also served on the Board of Tourism Council WA, Access 31 Televisions and Kids Help Line. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

In 2002, Gerry began to devote most of his professional time to the conference industry and became a specialist conference MC and facilitator. He is also a much sought after corporate MC and has worked in every city in Australia and overseas.

Gerry has been providing media skills training to government, not-for-profit and industry for over 10 years. Following his experience on the conference circuit he now provides speech and presentation training courses.

But his main passion is in providing a refreshing dimension to conferences with his quick wit and his ability to quickly grasp some of the complex issues presented at conferences.

Technical Tours

Technical Tours 1-3 are being held from 13:00-17:00 on Wednesday, 30 May 2012 and will depart from the Adelaide Convention Centre. All tours are priced at $40 each and can be purchased via the online registration form.

Conference delegates only may book on these tours due to limited numbers (maximum 30 per technical tour and 60 for Coopers Brewery technical/social tour).

1.Infrastructure - Superway

The $812 million South Road Superway project is the biggest single investment in a South Australian road project and the state's most complex engineering road construction project to date.

A total re-design of the area's existing road network, the South Road Superway features an elevated transit corridor with multiple lanes in each direction, from the Port River Expressway above the major intersections of South Terrace, Wingfield rail line, Cormack Road, Grand Junction Road and Days Road, returning to ground level near Taminga Street at Regency Park.

When complete, this project will improve access for local businesses and the surrounding residential and commercial area, as well as ensure the safe and efficient movement of people and goods.

The tour will commence with a briefing of the project, addressing many areas such as community involvement, environmental impact, project leadership and engineering design. This will be followed by a site tour by bus of the casting yard and site construction works.

2.Defence - Techport and Air Warfare Destroyer

South Australia continues to build on its reputation as a Defence state with the South Australian Government investing over $300 million in state-owned infrastructure at Techport Australia to develop a world-class maritime industrial precinct. Winner of a 2010 Engineering Excellence award, the Techport Australia Common User Facility works included over 450,000m3 of marine dredging, as well as construction of a 213m long fully-serviced wharf, a 300m long fully-serviced rail-based runway and extra heavy duty paved dry berth, and Australia's largest shiplift, capable of handling 9,300t vessels. The Judges were also impressed with the environmental benefits from the dredging activities which were achieved.

The Techport facility supports ASC to deliver the Royal Australian Navy's next generation $8 billion Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) and will attract future naval shipbuilding and repair opportunities to the state. The $8 billion dollar contract for the three Hobart Class AWD is the largest naval shipbuilding project yet undertaken in Australia. A separate $3.1 billion dollar contract for two 27,000 tonne landing helicopter dock (LHD) ships will result in the RAN's largest-ever platforms. While the superstructure for both ships will be constructed largely at Tenix's Williamstown shipyard, combat system integration will be performed in Adelaide, while assembly of the ships will also be carried out at Williamstown after the arrival of the hulls from Navantia's Ferrol shipyard in northwestern Spain.

ASC was also responsible for the construction of the Collins Class submarines, an unprecedented feat of engineering, design and logistics in Australia.

The tour will include a tour of the Techport facility and incorporate elements of both the submarine and AWD projects. Please note, security restrictions apply to this tour.

3.Water - Desalination and NSISP

The South Australian Government and SA Water are committed to providing reliable drinking water supplies for the future. As part of South Australia's Water for Good Plan to secure water for the future, the Government is building a seawater desalination plant at Lonsdale, south of Adelaide, to ensure drinking water is available even in times of drought. The total project cost is $1.83 billion and the plant will deliver up to 100 billion litres of water each year (100GL) - about half of Adelaide's annual water supply.

AdelaideAqua - a consortium of four companies with extensive world-wide desalination experience and strong safety and environmental credentials - have been contracted to design, build, operate and maintain the plant for 20 years, and construction is well underway. The project will be commissioned in April 2011 (approximately 15 million litres a day), progressing to 50GL capacity by the end of August 2011 and full 100GL capacity by the end of December 2012.

Implementing the Adelaide desalination plant is only part of the story. Adelaide's water supply system is roughly split at the River Torrens into a northern system (supplied through the Hope Valley and Anstey Hill Water Treatment Plants) and a southern system (supplied through the Happy Valley Water Treatment Plant). The North South Interconnection System Project (NSISP) was commissioned, consisting of a range of works to "connect up" the northern and southern supply networks. These works will allow SA Water to move water across one connected system - improving water reliability for Adelaide. Water from the Adelaide desalination plant, connected to the southern network, will also be distributed throughout the whole water supply network system from 2012.

The tour will commence with a visit to the desalination plant, incorporating a tour of the operating plant and a discussion on project leadership issues, typical of long timeframe complex projects. This will be followed by an overview of the NSISP project, incorporating its role in the vision for the future of the state and how the project dealt with environmental, risk and other constraints. Finally a bus/walking tour of NSISP elements under construction is included.

Technical/Socail Tour 4
Technical / Social Tour 4 will depart from the Adelaide Convention Centre. There are two departure times for this tour, the first one departs at 11.00 and the second departs at 14.00. Tickets are priced at $40 each and can be purchase via the online registration form.

4.Coopers Brewery

The Coopers story began in a newly established colony, with a brilliant accident. After turning his hand to a number of trades, Thomas Cooper discovered his talent as a brewer by accident; when he created his first batch of beer as a tonic for his ailing wife Ann. That day in 1862 was the start of an amazing journey ...

In recent years Coopers has grown to become an iconic South Australian success story. With a new home in Regency Park (2000), the Coopers Brewery had more brewhouse capacity (two and half times that of the original Leabrook site) plus a unique fusion of modern innovation and Coopers' brewing tradition. In all an investment of more than $100m.

If you're a beer enthusiast, a budding brewer, or just a lover of fine ales, you're gonna love this. The tour will take you through virtually every step of the production process for both beer and homebrew. You start at the museum, visit the onsite power station on the way to the brewhouse, then check out the bottling hall before heading back to the museum. In the museum, aside from gaining an insight into the history of Coopers, you'll get to enjoy tastings of Coopers ales, stouts and lagers.