The rise of the bureaucrats was as deliberate as it is disastrous
By Philip Breen
When the Chifley Government, in 1948, decided to implement a scheme to harness the waters of the Snowy Mountains and direct them into turbines to generate electricity, they first set up an authority to design and implement the scheme. They did not appoint a high-flying CEO to lead this venture as would happen today. They sought applicants for the position of Chairman and apparently when the responsible minister, Nelson Lemmon, reported to cabinet concerning a short list of three, he sent a note to the PM that read, ‘Hudson, Hudson, Hudson’.
And so, New Zealand-born William Hudson, then an employee at Sydney Water Board, became the first Chairman of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority, a position he was to hold until near completion of the scheme below budget and on time. He first assembled an engineering design team to create an overall concept, engineers for the detailed designs, engineers to direct the construction and lastly a workforce sometimes numbering over 7,000. He was a Civil Engineer with vision who was able to lead and inspire those who worked under him. The rest is history. Today a Snowy Chairman and CEO are managerial, needing no engineering design or construction experience. A William Hudson Chairman and his Civil Engineer CEO would not have been waiting for the PM to call them about Snowy 2.0. If that scheme does stack up, such an Authority run by engineers would have already investigated and optimised it and put it to the politicians long before now.
In an earlier period, John Bradfield, born in bayside Sandgate, Brisbane, educated at the State Primary and then the Grammar School in Ipswich, went on to study for a Bachelor of Engineering degree at the University of Sydney. Graduating in 1889, his name was to become synonymous with the arguments for and the promotion of various designs for a bridge over Sydney Harbour and the associated roads and suburban electric railways. His plans were described by Sir John Monash as ‘works of exceptional magnitude’. NSW Premier Jack Lang wrote: ‘Bradfield was always thinking of the future, probably the first man to plan for Sydney as a city of two million people’. He lived before the rise of government and corporate bureaucracies that today shut out the innovative and creative, to secure their own positions, in a tiered managerial structure with infinite possibilities for expansion. There is no scope now for the rise of the visionary.
The process of rooting out engineers and forward thinkers from positions of influence, particularly in government bureaucracies at all levels of government, has been gradual but insidious. It did not happen by accident but by design. The forward-thinking, forward-planning, innovative mind is likely to be noticed by superiors, especially by those in a position to have their leadership challenged and they are therefore a threat. Best to sideline and silence people like that. That has been the task of a born-to-rule, self-serving managerial class for a long time. They are the graduates in arts, law, government, economics, history, philosophy, the social sciences and the like. This is not to downplay the worth of these callings, but as a class they see themselves as an intellectual elite born to reign supreme in the bureaucracies. They are dismissive of the creative and inquiring minds that constitute the derisively-labelled STEM callings whom they have subdued and lord over to effectively silence them. STEMs are banished into small groups handy to be consulted by superiors in an emergency, as one would the plumber for a leaking tap. Well, you may say ‘this is too much, this fellow is completely over the top’. Not so, let me illustrate, with the tragic case of the rapid dismantling of the superbly efficient Queensland Public Service.
Queensland only became a self-governing colony in 1857, yet its governments led the nation in many spheres. Public servants’ super was fully funded from the start. Debt-free public hospitals provided free means-tested care long before Medicare. From its earliest days Queensland put engineers in charge of a majority of state departments in a lean and efficient public service nurtured by Labor, from 1915 to 1957 (apart for 3 years) and passed on to the National/Liberals who left it unchanged in governance till 1987.
That year Wayne Goss became Premier allowing Kevin Rudd BA and his friend Peter Coaldrake BA, lecturer at QIT, both political ex-staffers, to set about dismantling the public service. That service built up caringly over more than 100 years had just seen Queensland, the only state to come through the 1987 stock market crash with flying colours. Till then engineers occupied the leadership roles in all the infrastructure departments, including Coordinator-General of Public Works, Main Roads, Railways, Irrigation and Water Supply, Electric Power, Mines, Harbours and Marine and Local Government engineering. Soon they were all gone, replaced by federal look-alike and greatly expanded departments, said by Coaldrake to be a required cultural (wow!) reform, but judged by astute observers to be a text book driven frolic. Goss in retirement apologised for this wanton vandalism. The new managerial class, now entrenched, knows nothing of the skills required for pre-planning within government to achieve efficient infrastructure, delivered at economic cost or of planning for operation, maintenance and future upgrading. Everything is ad hoc. The results have been disastrous. I rest my case.
Now governments’ work goes to Australian engineering consultancies, admittedly offering services of the highest order of skill and competence, but they do not provide long-term planning which is the job of government. Margaret Thatcher visiting Japan to witness their economic miracle post-war, noted that engineers were in charge at all levels of government and industry. No doubt that is largely true of powerhouses like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China today. Those who like to categorise engineers as unlettered nerds, unsuited to lead a bureaucracy, might dwell on the words of René Descartes, the 17th century philosopher: ‘Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other bequeathed to us by human agency.’
Australia’s current malaise (especially the energy fiasco) could be remedied if we had leaders of the class of Ben Chifley and his minister Nelson Lemmon, in the Commonwealth and the states, to seek applicants to transform the public services into far-sighted and constructive organisations. They would wisely choose engineers experienced in design and construction to do that job.
Read the original article :
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/where-have-all-the-engineers-gone/
Vernier Luncheon – 14th March 2019
/by wp624127This month’s luncheon speakers are Anjali Thirumalavan about Robogoals & Diverse Women’s Mentoring followed by Sam Harris – A case-study in business transformation, from services to products.
Vernier Luncheon – 14th February 2019
/by wp624127Barry Hendy the Managing Director of Andrew Donald Design Engineering and Joseph Bertolini PhD the R&D Director of CSL Behring will be providing us with some very interesting topics in our February Luncheon.
Building Engineers not Products
/by wp624127Engineers Australia Presentation – Professor Mike Xie
/by wp624127Join Engineers Australia as Professor Mike Xie, RMIT Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials delivers a presentation on Design Optimisation and Advanced Manufacturing of Innovative Structures and Materials.
Professor Xie and his team have developed an innovative design methodology to remove inefficient material from structures, producing lightweight and strikingly elegant designs. This technique can significantly reduce the weight and the associated energy consumption of aircraft and motor vehicles, and building these structures has become possible through advanced manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing.
This presentation will demonstrate how Mike’s “BESO” (Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimisation) method can be applied in light-weight structures, mechanical metamaterials, and connections.
This event will take place at Engineers Australia, Level 31, 600 Bourke Street, Melbourne on Tuesday 20 November 2018 from 6.30pm to 8.00pm – arrive at 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start.
Meet the Speaker: Professor Mike Xie, Director, RMIT Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials
Prof. Mike Xie is the Director of RMIT Centre for Innovative Structures and Materials. He is a fellow of both Engineers Australia (EA) and Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE). He has collaborated with many companies including Arup, Boeing, and Smith & Nephew. Prof. Xie was awarded the 2017 AGM Michell Medal by EA in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field of mechanical engineering. He also received the 2017 Clunies Ross Innovation Award from ATSE.
Engineers Australia Event
/by wp624127The Victorian Vernier Society recently sponsored an event at Engineers Australia – some great sessions and speakers!
Vernier organised the main speaker and a panel comprising of Vernier ‘associates’, all experienced in 4.0, with Vernier President, Kerry Little, acting as Moderator.
Charity Christmas Dinner 6th December 2018
/by wp624127Stephanie Woollard will be inspiring us with her work at Seven Women Inc that helps to educate, train and employ marginalised women in Nepal. Then we will be hearing from Hannah and Jordan with some operatic entertainment.
Vernier Luncheon – 8th November – Martin Merry
/by wp624127Martin Merry will be presenting “Moving from a Global Manufacturer, General Motors, to APV Corporation, a privately owned Australian manufacturing company”. Martin has 30 years’ experience in Manufacturing and Operations Management at GM.
Vernier Luncheon – 11th October – Nick Stavrakis
/by wp624127Nick Stavrakis – MD of Dana Australia. “Finding a better way” has been Dana’s mantra since it was founded, more so does it resonate today with the exiting of the Auto car makers in this country. To survive Dana Australia has had to make some significant changes in the way they do things, what they sell but most of all their mindset. The presentation will cover their journey in finding a better way, with their customers, with their products and most of all with Dana’s people.
Vernier Luncheon – 13th Sept – David Rose
/by wp624127Come along and hear how Exquisine developed from a commercial kitchen making a range of sweet and savoury, solid and liquid, gourmet offerings to today’s custom designed facility that creates tens of thousands of desserts each day.
Reflections on the AMTIL Conference 2018
/by wp624127There are times today when one feels that Australian Manufacturing does not get the support it needs, so it was good as a Vernier Society member to attend Australia’s leading Manufacturing organisation, AMTIL, at their National Conference held on the 22nd of August in Hawthorn.
From my experience, there are two main ingredients to a successful conference; the first is organisation and Kim Banks and her team at AMTIL certainly delivered with a professional and well managed event. The second is to produce a set of speakers who maintain both the theme and the enthusiasm throughout the event and again after a slow start, AMTIL delivered, with an exceptional afternoon program.
The role of the keynote speaker is a daunting task at the best of times and Michael Grogan of AMGC (Australian Manufacturing Growth Centre) task was not eased when he was asked at the last minute to fill in for his sick boss. The conference theme was ‘Resilience’ and Michael outlined the 3 major messages of AMGC’s recent report on ‘Resilience; ‘Superiority – Diversity – Flexibility’. AMGC’s message of what companies need to do was clear (and well spelled out in their full report) but I am always left with a feeling that organisations like AMGC do not go far enough in assisting the delivery of the ‘how’. Victorian manufacturing seems to be focused on the ‘S’ in SME’s (it would be interesting to know AMTIL’s member profile in this regard) with owners more comfortable on the shop floor than in the board room; while the appointees to these government sponsored organisations seem to have the reverse comfort.
Another element of a successful conference recipe is that one can take away from each speaker a lasting taste, a little nugget of knowledge or even a new technique that one can use or repeat in their business and so here are my message picks from some of the other speakers.
Rick Shalders of IDU Raytheon outlined the opportunities for Australian companies in the American and global defence market. It is a very tough but lucrative market to crack and Rick showed one chart of the differences in competitive and acceptance entry levels between companies that compete on niche technologies and companies that want to compete on what he called “Build to Print”. Both routes require exhaustive processes to success but the ‘BP’ route is much more competitive and requires very high standards of continuous improvement.
Gary Birtwistle is a motivational speaker who left the audience with a vast number of messages about dreaming, thinking and delivering future success. One phrase that stuck was “will it make the boat go faster”. Whatever ideas one has, this question should be asked – will it really improve what we are trying to do? The other thing he highlighted were the many motivational books and authors worth reading but one is “Legacy” – the story of the All Blacks success by James Kerr. I can also recommend this fabulous book about the culture and spirit of the All Blacks and very pertinent to both their recent retention of the Bledisloe Cup but also one of their key characteristics is ‘humility’, something that the recent appalling, political intrigues showed was clearly missing.
Claire Madden is an author and social researcher who shared her insights on Generation Z (born after 1999) and how they appear to think and act so different to other generations and especially mine (baby boomer). It was a well-researched and insightful presentation highlighting issues such as use of technology and new language, attention spans and career ambitions but to myself and other colleagues it created a disturbing picture of how this generation will integrate into today’s business practices. Which will have to change and how will compromise be reached?
The final speaker was a remarkable woman. Deanna Blegg is a world class athlete who has overcome HIV and cancer to still compete in endurance competitions that most people would never even contemplate. There were no messages to be taken away – only astonishment and admiration!
It was a successful conference offering strong networking around breaks enjoyed by the 150 plus attendees who took the day out to attend. It is though a disappointing fact that many of the people in Victoria’s manufacturing community seem to be so entrenched in their businesses today that attendances at such events (including Vernier) is diminishing. Too many business people (and others) seem to feel the need to be in constant touch ‘in’ the business that they do not appreciate the value of attending such external events. The conference message was resilience but it was also about just taking time out to think insightfully ‘on’ the future business.
Where have all the engineers gone??
/by wp624127The rise of the bureaucrats was as deliberate as it is disastrous
By Philip Breen
When the Chifley Government, in 1948, decided to implement a scheme to harness the waters of the Snowy Mountains and direct them into turbines to generate electricity, they first set up an authority to design and implement the scheme. They did not appoint a high-flying CEO to lead this venture as would happen today. They sought applicants for the position of Chairman and apparently when the responsible minister, Nelson Lemmon, reported to cabinet concerning a short list of three, he sent a note to the PM that read, ‘Hudson, Hudson, Hudson’.
And so, New Zealand-born William Hudson, then an employee at Sydney Water Board, became the first Chairman of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority, a position he was to hold until near completion of the scheme below budget and on time. He first assembled an engineering design team to create an overall concept, engineers for the detailed designs, engineers to direct the construction and lastly a workforce sometimes numbering over 7,000. He was a Civil Engineer with vision who was able to lead and inspire those who worked under him. The rest is history. Today a Snowy Chairman and CEO are managerial, needing no engineering design or construction experience. A William Hudson Chairman and his Civil Engineer CEO would not have been waiting for the PM to call them about Snowy 2.0. If that scheme does stack up, such an Authority run by engineers would have already investigated and optimised it and put it to the politicians long before now.
In an earlier period, John Bradfield, born in bayside Sandgate, Brisbane, educated at the State Primary and then the Grammar School in Ipswich, went on to study for a Bachelor of Engineering degree at the University of Sydney. Graduating in 1889, his name was to become synonymous with the arguments for and the promotion of various designs for a bridge over Sydney Harbour and the associated roads and suburban electric railways. His plans were described by Sir John Monash as ‘works of exceptional magnitude’. NSW Premier Jack Lang wrote: ‘Bradfield was always thinking of the future, probably the first man to plan for Sydney as a city of two million people’. He lived before the rise of government and corporate bureaucracies that today shut out the innovative and creative, to secure their own positions, in a tiered managerial structure with infinite possibilities for expansion. There is no scope now for the rise of the visionary.
The process of rooting out engineers and forward thinkers from positions of influence, particularly in government bureaucracies at all levels of government, has been gradual but insidious. It did not happen by accident but by design. The forward-thinking, forward-planning, innovative mind is likely to be noticed by superiors, especially by those in a position to have their leadership challenged and they are therefore a threat. Best to sideline and silence people like that. That has been the task of a born-to-rule, self-serving managerial class for a long time. They are the graduates in arts, law, government, economics, history, philosophy, the social sciences and the like. This is not to downplay the worth of these callings, but as a class they see themselves as an intellectual elite born to reign supreme in the bureaucracies. They are dismissive of the creative and inquiring minds that constitute the derisively-labelled STEM callings whom they have subdued and lord over to effectively silence them. STEMs are banished into small groups handy to be consulted by superiors in an emergency, as one would the plumber for a leaking tap. Well, you may say ‘this is too much, this fellow is completely over the top’. Not so, let me illustrate, with the tragic case of the rapid dismantling of the superbly efficient Queensland Public Service.
Queensland only became a self-governing colony in 1857, yet its governments led the nation in many spheres. Public servants’ super was fully funded from the start. Debt-free public hospitals provided free means-tested care long before Medicare. From its earliest days Queensland put engineers in charge of a majority of state departments in a lean and efficient public service nurtured by Labor, from 1915 to 1957 (apart for 3 years) and passed on to the National/Liberals who left it unchanged in governance till 1987.
That year Wayne Goss became Premier allowing Kevin Rudd BA and his friend Peter Coaldrake BA, lecturer at QIT, both political ex-staffers, to set about dismantling the public service. That service built up caringly over more than 100 years had just seen Queensland, the only state to come through the 1987 stock market crash with flying colours. Till then engineers occupied the leadership roles in all the infrastructure departments, including Coordinator-General of Public Works, Main Roads, Railways, Irrigation and Water Supply, Electric Power, Mines, Harbours and Marine and Local Government engineering. Soon they were all gone, replaced by federal look-alike and greatly expanded departments, said by Coaldrake to be a required cultural (wow!) reform, but judged by astute observers to be a text book driven frolic. Goss in retirement apologised for this wanton vandalism. The new managerial class, now entrenched, knows nothing of the skills required for pre-planning within government to achieve efficient infrastructure, delivered at economic cost or of planning for operation, maintenance and future upgrading. Everything is ad hoc. The results have been disastrous. I rest my case.
Now governments’ work goes to Australian engineering consultancies, admittedly offering services of the highest order of skill and competence, but they do not provide long-term planning which is the job of government. Margaret Thatcher visiting Japan to witness their economic miracle post-war, noted that engineers were in charge at all levels of government and industry. No doubt that is largely true of powerhouses like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China today. Those who like to categorise engineers as unlettered nerds, unsuited to lead a bureaucracy, might dwell on the words of René Descartes, the 17th century philosopher: ‘Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other bequeathed to us by human agency.’
Australia’s current malaise (especially the energy fiasco) could be remedied if we had leaders of the class of Ben Chifley and his minister Nelson Lemmon, in the Commonwealth and the states, to seek applicants to transform the public services into far-sighted and constructive organisations. They would wisely choose engineers experienced in design and construction to do that job.
Read the original article :
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/where-have-all-the-engineers-gone/
Victorian Vernier Foundation Event – Thurs 9th Aug 2018
/by wp624127In their 2017 report “The New Work Smarts’, the “Foundation for Young Australians” declared;
“By 2030, Automation, globalisation and flexibility will change what we do in every job”
The Vernier Foundation’s 2018 Youth Forum will explore what this means to the high school students of today, the educational institutions and our leading manufacturing companies through our expert panel.