Rising to the challenge: Delivering defence capabilities amid ongoing workforce constraints

In April, Defence Connect reported that Australia’s severe and ongoing talent shortage had reached worrying new heights.

According to a freedom of information request sourced by former Independent senator Rex Patrick, Australia will require an additional 75,000 workers across four key trades by 2030, including electricians, construction managers, metal machinists, and welders.

The Deloitte report raised alarm bells for those overseeing Australia’s ambitious nuclear-powered submarine program. With Australia’s “feeder workforce” – a term for the entire pool of workers eligible to participate in the nuclear-powered submarine project – experiencing such a talent deficit, will we even have enough workers to deliver the capability?

The question is not so alarmist when we remember that the defence industry doesn’t operate in a vacuum.

Defence businesses will be forced to attract talent against other sectors in a tight labour market. If tradespeople and STEM professionals aren’t already enticed by the well-deserved wages afforded by Australia’s ever-booming resources industry, they’ll easily find employment in Australia’s sprawling major cities, which the Albanese government hopes to grow with another 1.2 million homes by 2029 – replete with additional infrastructure, roads, schools, and hospitals.

And like many of Australia’s new builds, the cracks are already appearing.

The Deloitte report classified several engineering professions as “high risk” occupations threatening to rock the SSN-boat, while South Australia remains home to just 6 per cent of Australia’s engineering workforce. Moreover, the work would require positive vetting – an insurmountable hurdle if the Commonwealth cannot build a domestic talent pipeline.

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The ambitious nuclear-powered submarine program is just a small example of a problem felt across defence industry. So how are we going to persevere and overcome this obstacle?

The recently launched Defence Industry Development Strategy reduced the number of Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities (SICPs) from 14 to a new targeted seven Sovereign Defence Industrial Priorities (SDIPs). The logic is sensible, ensuring that industry is targeting and investing in only the most priority fields.

With test and evaluation identified as one of the Commonwealth’s seven new SDIPS, Defence Connect sat down with Gary Stewart, chief executive of QinetiQ’s Australia Sector, to understand how the business is rising to the challenge of building a workforce capable of tackling tomorrow’s needs.

According to the industry insider, QinetiQ is looking to leverage its global supply chain and knowledge base to rapidly upskill its Australian workforce, making them more agile, adaptable, and ready to meet Defence needs.

“Defence has identified that there will be a shortfall of over 400 T&E practitioners this year alone, growing to over 1,000 by 2030,” Stewart said.

“We are today actively developing our own T&E workforce to meet this challenge through continuing to train our more than 1,000 highly skilled people here in Australia who are involved in designing, manufacturing, testing and evaluating Australia’s defence platforms and systems. And by accessing our global workforce to uplift our and our supply chain’s expertise and capacity.”

An innovative element of QinetiQ’s plan is taking Australian specialists to the United Kingdom, from where they will be trained to meet Defence’s current and future objectives.

“An example of the work we are doing to grow the T&E skills in Australia is our T&E Sovereign Skills Program. This really is quite a unique program that takes people from our nation and sends them to the UK where we have been delivering T&E for more than 20 years and trains, mentors, and coaches individuals with specialist teams at a variety of our T&E facilities,” Stewart said.

“These individuals then come back to Australia to support the important work we do with Defence to protect the nation and bolster our more than 250-plus T&E practitioners in-country today. This is a tangible example of QinetiQ’s commitment to invest upfront to grow the future workforce in a critical capability area for the defence of our nation.”

To the industry stalwart, the inclusion of test and evaluation (T&E) in the seven SDIPs will ensure that Defence has a greater understanding of its existing and planned capabilities. Not only will this ensure better integration of large ticket items, but also drive efficiency across the joint force.

“Ensuring our defence capability works and is safe to operate is just as important as acquiring new platforms or systems. Quite simply, they won’t work without it, and this is why I take this so seriously, and it is why Defence is prioritising it. It is the only truly horizontal SDIP and cuts across all the other system and platform verticals,” Stewart told Defence Connect.

“We can’t afford to do T&E in a piecemeal manner going forward. It can no longer be a stove-pipe approach as this does not deliver the speed required to deliver the capability we need. We need to design a T&E Enterprise that is deployed earlier in the lifecycle to enable emerging technologies to be accelerated in Australia, and to support better, faster procurement decisions.

“These are things that benefit all the SDIPs. This is something that cuts across shipbuilding and weapons and is a critical enabler for Defence. An enterprise approach to T&E will look beyond individual projects and incorporate the development of capability and efficiencies across all phases of the One Defence Capability System.”

With an eye to driving efficiency for Defence, Stewart commended the recently released Defence Industry Development Strategy (DIDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP), noting that certainty will make doing business in Australia easier and ensuring that business can better deliver for Defence.

“The combination of the DIDS and IIP provides greater certainty for Australia’s defence industry to respond to the nation’s strategic security needs. Defence industry not only has a signal as to the changing strategic context, the capability areas the government deems as critical to the defence of Australia, but how we, as an industry, can and should respond,” he said.

“One of our key priorities is to now work with Defence to contribute to the creation of a T&E Enterprise. This is integral to Australia’s investment in protecting the nation, and we are working to help ensure that both the design and delivery of the enterprise is fit for Australia’s requirements.”

Stewart’s desire to grab the bull by the horns is commendable.

Already, last year’s Defence Strategic Review highlighted the need for Defence to consider “trade-offs” to deliver its priority assets. While it is the responsibility of a government to prioritise and execute key deliverables, the stark admission that Australia is currently unable to deliver the assets its servicepeople require is alarming.

However, with a more knowledgeable, adaptable and agile workforce – we may still rise to the challenge.