QLD & NSW Winter Newsletter 2019

QLD & NSW Winter Newsletter

It’s time to bring out the heated blankets, fire pits and woolly socks; Winter’s here! We have had a great quarter with the QLD team welcoming David Newland on board as the new Training & Development Manager QLD, make sure to say hi to David at your next event.

We held some terrific events throughout Autumn, including the first Continuous Improvement Leaders breakfast in NSW. Thank you to our wonderful members Actron Air for hosting this event. We’ve had a diverse range of Common Interest Work Groups, Masterclasses and training events over the past few months with plenty more on the horizon. Keep your eye on our calendars for our upcoming events.

Hannah Watts
Customer Support & Event Manager

Notable highlights for this quarter in QLD & NSW

We welcomed 11 new companies as SIRF members, ran 29 events which 487 people attended and was represented by 64 different companies.

QLD Joint Rt | Senior Leaders Dinner

March saw us host our QLD senior leaders dinner at The Gabba, the photographs tell the story better than words, but it was a great night with guest speaker Brett Spicer from ERM Power talking about taking back control of your plant power bills. It is always good to see such diversity of company representation and new members attending these events.

The highlight of the evening for me was talking to a couple of guys on my table that have not been in contact for several years but used to work with each other, they soon caught up with all the changes and had a great night. The conversations flowed and many comments were made about how this is an incredible networking opportunity for leaders, the great food and wine also helps.

Gary Silversides; Managing Director

QLD Joint Roundtable CIWG | Technology Day

In early March, 20 representatives from 15 different businesses were treated to a glimpse of the near future on our inaugural Technology day held at the Port of Brisbane.

The opportunities offered by augmented reality solutions were impressively showcased by Rod Williams from Orica in conjunction with Ben Taft from MIRA. The clear benefits to process safety, control, training and remote trouble-shooting were validated by frontline Orica staff from Kalgoorlie where successful trials were recently conducted.

Kingsley Palmer from Movus treated the group to a demonstration of the impressive FitMachine® an ‘All-in-one’ equipment monitoring solution where vibration, heat and noise are simultaneously monitored within defined alert limits. Several SIRF members have already implemented this simple, but effective solution.
Whilst robots are well established in the Australian workplace, the advancement into collaborative robotics (Cabots) was demonstrated by Adam Saint from Scott Automation. Cabots are designed to make elements of the average work environment safer, easier and more effective.

The rate at which ‘drone’ technology is advancing has opened up many new industrial applications, with Hoverscape taking a leading role in external structure condition monitoring. Derek Feebrey presented the use of high-end drones, cameras and software in the condition monitoring of large structures where human monitoring is inaccurate, prohibitive and dangerous.

Overall feedback for this over-subscribed session was extremely positive with requests for future events to be held. I look forward to facilitating more of these events in the future.

David Newland; Training & Development Manager QLD

NSW CIWG | 5S in Maintenance Works

Yes, we saw it in practice at our event in May hosted by News Corp at their facility in Chullora, Sydney.

Graham Regan, News Corp Australia's National Reliability Leader presented to the interested attendees the journey of their 5S program and the insights around how they have made it stick for over 9 years. Now that's sustainable.

Graham was supported on the day by Chullora's Head of Maintenance, Kevin Jurd, who proudly shared his views and took us on the site tour.

It was great to see a successful and sustainable 5S program in practice and to hear from those who have made this possible. Their passion and pride shone through on the day and we cannot thank them enough for sharing this with our members. Another great SIRF event where knowledge was shared and great networking occurred that I am sure will lead to innovation in those companies that attended

John Smith; Training & Development Manager NSW

SIRF Events in Pictures

SIRF held over 16 events across Queensland and New South Wales over the last quarter. The majority of these are hosted on-site by our member companies. Without the support of these companies, our members wouldn't have the opportunity to visit other sites and learn from their peers. This quarter we'd like to thank Thales, Zip Heaters, Moly-Cop, GroundProbe, Scott Automation, Kavanagh, Austral Bricks, Arnott's, Australia Post, West HQ, Winson Group, Incitec Pivot Limited.

SIRF Roundtables Blog

QLD & NSW Winter Newsletter 2019