Engineers are enjoying a renewed policy focus on STEM skills, innovation and their role in meeting societal needs. But they’re also butting up against real, current impediments to progress – many of their own making. In the search for practical, cost-effective and bankable solutions, intentional design is offering a lucrative, achievable...
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It seems that everyone is talking about design thinking. But is it relevant to infrastructure owners, investors and developers? Newspapers, business and industry magazines are publishing ever more articles on design thinking or human-centred design. They include examples like Samsung’s mobile phones and televisions, PepsiCo’s products and customer experiences, or...
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More money won’t address the shortfall of good infrastructure projects. Better planning and governance arrangements will help, but a shift in mind-sets is the key. Many people in the infrastructure ‘community’ are captured in a false narrative and mind-set. Better approaches are being overlooked as effort goes into solving the...
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Executives in the infrastructure sector can literally design their way to success. But their language and actions reveal that they don’t believe this to be true. This is despite real evidence to the contrary. Until they display the humility to test their basic assumptions, many millions of dollars will continue...
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“What a terrific result! We need to apply this approach to all our projects.” That was Don’s enthusiastic response. He was a mining executive who’d just recognised a 700-fold return on his investment. So what had Don invested in – advanced geological mapping, new high-technology driverless trucks, off-shoring of engineering...
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Community opposition to new developments is incurring project delays, increased operational costs and substantial write-downs in the value of business assets, much of which might be avoidable. Why this is and continues to occur needs to be examined. A lack of emotional intelligence could be a root cause. As Australia...
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New developments present understandable challenges for existing communities. But communities need to stop opposing new development and instead demand a higher calibre of infrastructure outcome if collectively we are to make progress and get the productivity-enhancing infrastructure Australia needs. Here we go again I am starting to feel like Phil...
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