Water Skills Partnership Update

by Neil Holmes, Water Skills Partnership Manager

Advocacy

Skills and Training is a hot topic at all levels of government at the moment, and the qldwater team, especially Skills Partnership Manager Neil Holmes, spends a lot of time making sense of it all!

qldwater continues to provide input as an Industry Skills Advisor (ISA) for the Department of Youth Justice, Employment, Small Business and Training (DYJESBT) as part of a contract to provide skills advice through to 30 December 2023.

In this role, Neil recently completed a Price List Review to inform DYJESBT on the levels of subsidy, funding mechanisms and issues around qualifications or units of competency based on industry feedback and experience. qldwater called for maintaining the highest Priority 1 level for Cert II and Cert III, greater flexibility on subsidies and a review of location loadings as a possible barrier to participation.

We continued to advocate for an increase to Higher Level Skills subsidies, particularly the Certificate IV which receives ongoing strong demand, and were successful in securing a 50% uplift in subsidy levels for both Certificate IV and Diploma qualifications. Another area of continued advocacy focus is that of the lack of “Skills Assure Suppliers” – the RTOs which can deliver subsidised training accessing User Choice and C3G funding programs.

George Wall’s announcement at the Water Skills Forum that the new Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) for Water Operations, clustered in with Build Skills Australia, has finally been formed was welcome news, and we will continue to work with our national partners to raise the visibility of the sector within a group where it could easily disappear. The Jobs Skills Councils replace the former Industry Clusters as part of the federal VET system reforms.

qldwater represents our Skills Partners on the following reference committees / projects:

• Ongoing partnerships with key agencies and organisations, and increased collaboration with Queensland Health to support indigenous council skilling activities.

• Working closely with the Water Industry Worker (WIW) Coordinator to develop a number of regional training hubs linked to QWRAP activities.

• Working with the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) on an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) Project to promote careers in the sector.

• Participating in workshops as part of the Water Research Australia Operator Benchmarking project.

Training Resources

We are waiting to hear back whether our work with RTOs on an application for the next round of DYJESBT Micro Credential funding will be successful. Our application was based on feedback from SPG and Skills Partners with four topic areas selected including Fluoride, SCADA, making use of water quality data and the operator’s role in effectively implementing a DWQMP.

If successful, the micro-credential courses will be developed in partnership with our members and other stakeholders and hosted on the water training website, allowing us to grow our training resources on this platform.

We just completed the migration of the training platform to Moodle Workplace and we are working our way through the new settings which will give us better functionality around reporting and administration.

The site currently hosts the Aqua Card (QLD & NSW), Brown Card (QLD, NSW and SA), an introduction to the water industry and a SCADA micro credential course with a Green Card currently under development with an estimated release date of July 2023.

In the meantime, for those wanting to learn more about a range of topics, qldwater members have access to our topic-based resource library of 22 Fundamentals Webinars covering common water and wastewater treatment and network operations and maintenance.

We are also developing a Skills Toolbox as a one stop shop for valuable resources around skills and training –it’s a work in progress but you can already check it out at https://qldwater.com.au/skills-toolbox

Snapshot Report

A big shout out to our members who responded to our request for workforce data for the 2022 Workforce Composition Snapshot Report.

With 33 responses received, this much larger response level requires data to be normalised to ensure we obtain the most accurate picture of changes in the sector since the last report was released two years ago.

We share some of the key findings on the next page.

Go Queensland!

We won’t mention the State of Origin at the WIOA Conference next month, but we hope our water performs as well in the Water of Origin competition!

All the best to Mackay Regional Council - may the winning spree last a little while longer.