As part of the Roads Australia Fellowship Program, Fellows work with colleagues from their home state to develop a research project, with presentations made at the end-of-year workshop and the winner announced at the Fellows dinner.
This year’s research prompt was “What is one technical innovation we can introduce to our industry that will help us achieve RA policy objectives and open up opportunities for new streams of talent in our workforce?”
Coming out on top after a range of insightful and entertaining presentations was the Queensland grouping comprised of Anita Mumford –AECOM, Brendan Rutter – Mott MacDonald, Clarissa Ahlberg – HDR, Georgia Robazza – Transurban and Ho-Yee Lam – BG&E.
Their project included close collaboration with Before You Dig Australia (BYDA) and its CEO Mell G. with a presentation on digitising BYDA.
The group discovered that the average Before You Dig Australia inner-city referral results in up to 12 emails, more than 17 attachments and up to 67 pages of plans and with projects on average spending 38% of the project costs on utilities any information improvements will be impactful.
The group determined that by enabling digital data sharing, significant efficiency and safety benefits can be generated, including the potential to save 180,000 working hours or 90 FTE in Australia each year. A further $120m could be saved each year in reduced PUP strikes with further enhancements to data sharing.
These research projects require a significant amount of work from Fellows in addition to their usual workload.
Congratulations to all groups on their final projects and a special congratulations to the Queensland grouping for their win.
Read their report in full here: https://lnkd.in/gpdixFzE
