2022 Transport Summit Program

Passionate about new mobility, Marie-France Laurin has spent most of her career exploring mobility trends, technologies and providers, and synergies between them to help people bring ideas to life. Prior to joining Stantec to work on accelerating the adoption of autonomous vehicles, she served as the Chief Development Officer for Netlift and a consultant in smart mobility, autonomous vehicles, new mobility solutions, and smart cities. She has also worked for an international mobility operator as the Director of Public Affairs, Communications, and Strategic Development, where she was responsible for autonomous vehicles demonstrations in Canada.

In the lead up to the Transport Summit, RA has convened a number of webinars that have looked at the convergence of transport planning with other fields in order to support the successful transition to net-zero emissions. This session will build upon some of the issues raised in those webinars around energy, fleet changes and intertwined government policy objectives and explore what more can be done to accelerate decarbonisation and meet our emissions targets.

Australia is about to enter an unprecedented and ambitious major infrastructure project investment with more than $200 billion to be spent over the next five years. Significant shortages in materials and the workforce are expected putting major pressure on clients and contractors to deliver these projects. This discussion will explain who is doing what in government and industry to deliver changes in procurement and risk management to meet this challenge and what more needs to be done by all parties to deliver Australia’s infrastructure agenda efficiently and effectively.

The infrastructure and construction sectors will be required to deliver a record project pipeline over the next several years. Yet despite some progress over recent years, the industry still has a long way to travel to address problems which make it difficult to attract the talented workers we need. These include burnout arising from excessive work hours, poor mental health outcomes and continuing challenges with attracting women and those from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in the sector. This panel session will highlight some of the steps being taken to address these issues and consider what more industry and governments can do to accelerate change.

A panel of participants from the CEO’s Workshop (held on the day prior to Summit) will join RA President Michael Bushby to highlight the major industry priorities identified and consider how RA and industry can progress these over the year ahead.

Please note – this event is not included in the Summit registration. If you wish to attend, you will need to register separately.

Over the past year, RA has collaborated with the Infrastructure Sustainability Council and the Australasian Railway Association to develop our new report Journey to Net-Zero: Inspiring Action in the Australian Transport Sector. This paper puts forward recommendations setting out how our land-based transport infrastructure sector can start the journey to decarbonise and create a more sustainable industry. In this session our panel will discuss this report, its implications and the next actions for us to take.

This session will examine issues around transport pricing and consider how the desire of  productivity experts to remove inefficient taxes and de facto levies on movement can be achieved in a way that addresses community concerns around cost and privacy. In particular, the panel will look at how current and emerging technology will be used to deliver this necessary reform.

As our population grows and customer expectations change around the movement of people and goods, Australia cannot simply rely on building new transport infrastructure. We also need to closely examine our approach to the monitoring, management and maintenance of existing transport assets. This panel discussion will explore how new and emerging technology is being used to improve the management of our transport assets and expand their use and effective life.

Attracting and retaining talented workers is a critical challenge for our industry. RA’s Emerging Leaders program helps the next generation of industry leaders share knowledge and build their own empowering networks with access to a range of exclusive networking events, informative webinar discussions and group mentoring sessions. In this panel conversation, program participants will outline how it has helped them to enhance their own leadership capabilities and discuss how we can overcome some of the challenges that face our industry’s next generation of workers.

Those who build and maintain our roads rely on passing drivers to follow the rules in order to stay safe. This panel will examine a key question question: “Should road workers have a barrier to separate them from traffic?”. The session will take a look at approaches in Australia and New Zealand as well as from government and industry about the appropriate level of regulation and restriction that should be in place to ensure road workers get home safe.