No letting up for the demand of Engineers!

Welcome to the 14th edition of the AAAI Report.

As we enter the last few months of 2007, the economy in Australia has shown no signs of slowing down and there is a constant demand for professional engineers and managers. For our clients who have recently won major contracts or projects, this places enormous pressure to ramp up staffing levels quickly in order to meet their deadlines. This in turn forces more pressure on the availability of our local candidates, making them a very valuable commodity!

Our job in all of this is to keep "our hand on the pulse" and act quickly and efficiently for our clients with available or passive talent right across the globe. This requires working out a strategy and process that will find and attract the candidates often prior to an award of contract (if necessary), keep them interested and often entice them along with a sign on bonus. The world is a very different place compared to 5 years ago and we all have had to make changes in our workplace to adjust to the demands and pressure of the economy.

For candidates who want to know more about opportunities in their own state or simply want to take the time to evaluate their experience and potential in the market place, then we would be more than pleased to receive your call. Please contact a director in your state.

SEEK Awards - Cast your vote for the AAAI Group

Have you voted for us in the 2007 Seek Annual Recruitment Awards (SARA)? If not cast your vote for AAAI now.

Greening Australia, Ken Bidgood, AAAI Qld State Director

Global Warming, climate change, droughts, floods and fires all catch our imagination but at a practical level. What are we doing about it?

AAAI Group are proud to be at the forefront of these issues, working with our clients in Environmental Engineering and Science, Mining & Resources, Oil & Gas, Building & Construction and Manufacturing to source technical specialists, engineers, scientists, project managers and business unit leaders all engaged in the global effort to produce environmentally sustainable solutions.

"Think global, act local", has long been the catch cry of environmental groups when discussing a plethora of environmental issues, such as saving our wildlife from deforestation, or our fish stock from discarded plastic bags, or old growth forests from wood chippers. Today and every day, in practical terms, industry leaders are embracing this philosophy and considering what they and their businesses can do to make our planet safer and cleaner for future generations.

Here is an example of what one industry leader is doing:

One of the Asia Pacific\'s largest and most experienced multi-disciplinary consulting practices providing planning, surveying, engineering, environmental, scientific, business advisory and project management services to transportation, buildings, urban development, water, environment, energy, industrial, defence and telecommunications industries. So impressed were they when they saw a senior AAAI environmental candidate that they created the new role of "Sustainability Manager" in order to secure his services across the broad range of their engineering disciplines and project delivery arms. The candidate has a strong water engineering background, but in recent times has focused more and more on integrated water cycle management, environmental leadership, long-term sustainability of infrastructure developments and strategic input into climate change issues. This got the client\'s executive management team thinking - now here is a guy capable of pulling together our own engineering sustainability initiatives as well as those of our clients. A major part of what the candidate will be doing once he puts the internal systems in place will be to provide a climate change and sustainability consulting service to the company\'s existing and new clients.

Delivering carbon neutral solutions and ESD initiatives for the future are high on many firms "new-age" agenda\'s, and candidates such as the person described above will have the skills and experience to deliver corporate policy, develop company-wide frameworks and implementation strategies that can help harness the "environmental conscience" that is developing momentum in the home and workplace of late.

Stay tuned - this will be one of many similar positions created over the coming years and AAAI has the technical expertise as well as the industry networks to remain at the cutting edge of this new "action-oriented" sustainability paradigm.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read the AAAI Report and please recommend this report to any colleagues whom you think may be interested.

Best regards,
Mike Hayes