Campaign to promote infrastructure careers

Media Release 8 November 2007

Campaign to promote infrastructure careers

InfraTrain New Zealand has launched a major awareness campaign for the Infrastructure Industry. The national campaign is aimed at raising awareness and improving perceptions of the infrastructure industry as well as highlighting the wide range of career opportunities the industry offers.

John Wills, CEO of InfraTrain, said that the campaign was part of the organisation’s role of providing industry leadership. The awareness campaign came out of a dialogue between Government and the industry on buildability of new infrastructure, following release of the New Zealand Transport Strategy in 2003.

“The challenge is to deliver at least $20 billion of additional infrastructure projects over the next ten years.

“However, a number of restraints on buildability were identified – a key one being shortage of skills and labour.

“Contributing to this future workforce shortage are a number of factors, including the ageing population, increased demand in all sectors, changing education patterns and negative perceptions of infrastructure” he said.

The Infrastructure Industry Awareness Campaign has been developed with the guidance and support of key industry stakeholders and InfraTrain acknowledges both Transit New Zealand and Meridian Energy who have assisted with funding the first stage.

The first stage of the campaign is built around a website – www.ShapeYourFuture.co.nz – which is the backbone of the campaign. This will be supported by national radio and TV advertising and generic industry promotional material available for use by companies in the infrastructure industry.

The intended audience for the campaign is both young people at school and those who have started working, but may be thinking about a change.

The ShapeYourFuture website encourages young people who are interested in the infrastructure industry to talk to companies and it provides links to those companies which have websites and also industry organisations with listings of member companies.

John Wills said that the role of the campaign is to raise awareness of the very real career opportunities in infrastructure.

“However, it is industry’s role to turn this increased awareness into increased capacity” he said.

“Looking ahead, industry needs to consider how it will meet the needs of Generation “X” and “Y” and respond to their values, motivations and learning style if it is to build capability and retain staff” he said.

Editors Note
InfraTrain New Zealand is the nationally registered Industry Training Organisation for the infrastructure industries.

The awareness campaign website can be visited at www.ShapeYourFuture.co.nz

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