Queensland Future Skills partnership – TAFE Queensland and BHP video

[Robert Petherbridge - TAFE Queensland]

We started out the Future Skills Partnership, which is led by BHP Mitsubishi Alliance. They came to us wanting to get a solution for their workforce. They knew that they were implementing new technologies. They knew that they were implementing autonomous haul trucks, so the driverless trucks, if you like. The challenge was really about how you take an existing workforce and then skill for jobs of the future, and then attract new people into those jobs.

[James Palmer - BHP]

Providing pathways through into the resources industry, as well as our existing workforce who are upskilling and building capabilities, as many people as possible benefit from this fantastic partnership.

[Robert Petherbridge]

So the 3 key products we've built to date. We've got a suite of 10 micro-credentials, which are short, sharp programs that build aspiration for careers in the mining and METS sector. We have also built 12 skill sets focused specifically on those jobs and occupations that change. The skill sets upgrade their skills to allow them to do new and different jobs. And then finally, looking at who are going to be truly the workforce of the future and attracting them from a school age. So that's the Certificate II in Autonomous Technologies, which at this point in time has been delivered through schools. It builds aspiration for young people to think about jobs and careers in the METS sector.

[Peter Heilbuth - VET]

It's enormously important that we start to get the training and the skills in place for people who are going to move into those roles, which are rapidly becoming normal roles and not new roles, if you know, I mean in industry.

[Tamara Barden - BMA]

Having their eyes open through all of the experiences that they've had today is really going to give them an insight into what they could be or what they could do rather than what they already know. It's just opening their eyes up and creating just a broader view of what's out there.

[Robert Petherbridge]

The work that's been done through the Future Skills Partnership whilst focused on the mining and METS sector, absolutely does support emerging industries and new industries within Queensland's regions. The fundamentals of most of the skill sets and the micro-credentials, and even the Certificate II focus on what are the things that new technologies and different ways of working can be used to do and apply it in industry.

We can take that and we can look if you take cybersecurity for example, and how you apply cybersecurity into an automated farming environment. You can take AgTech and the new technologies in agriculture. The fundamentals of what's been developed are still the same.

At the end of the day, these sorts of programs and these partnerships create an agile and a competitive workforce for Queensland. A workforce that allows us to compete on the world stage and a workforce that allows us to be in front of new technology trends.