AM Congress Special: Supporting Young Professionals

Hi. Welcome to Transforming AM, our regular video series where we are discussing key asset management topics and sharing tips drawn from our collective experience across My name is Lauren Russell. Many of you might know that IPWEA's AM Congress is just a couple of weeks away. Today I'm joined by one of the presenters, Rory Gibbons, who will be sharing a little bit about his research. Welcome, Rory. Thanks, Lauren. Yeah. It feels like Christmas has come early this year with AM Congress in the capital. It's definitely gonna be a great event. So what are we presenting on? Yeah. My presentation will focus on how we can encourage young professionals to pursue a rich and rewarding career in asset management. So people are an essential element to effective asset management. It's documented in the double I double m in the ISO standards, as we all know. But the demand for skilled people has never been greater than at the moment. We've got ten percent of Australia's community infrastructure that's in poor condition to stay in. We've got a growing population in Australia, and now with net zero emissions targets in place, that's demanding rapid change across all sectors. So simply the demand is outpacing the supply for skilled practitioners and attracting and retaining skilled people is gonna be a critical challenge for our industry. But I think we're quite lucky in the sense that the nature of asset management positions us well. My preliminary research with universities indicates that graduates and young professionals are interested in three areas. That being high-tech, sustainability, and social equity, all of which are key elements to asset management. And as asset management practitioners, we're having a real positive impact on society, on our local communities. So I think this often overlooked, altruistic nature of our work can really be used and harnessed as a market differentiator in what's gonna be a really competitive job market moving forward. Great. Yeah. That's a really interesting topic. I also know that you've been doing some research with Engineers Australia. What does that indicate? Yeah. Yeah. Probably don't wanna give away too many spoilers just now. But generally speaking, that work indicates that, raising the asset management awareness within the traditional engineering streams, particularly at graduate or young professional level, may provide a, a higher recruitment stream, for getting those young professionals into asset management. And that raised awareness is also gonna result in better A and the commerce moving forward. Great. Yeah. And I know in that presentation, I understand there might be some action items? Yeah. Yeah. Like, we can all be involved in, encouraging young professionals. So I'll set out some action items for peak bodies, organizations, and and for individuals. And also just at this point, I just wanna take the time and and thank IPWEA for putting on the event. Been to a few events of yours before. They're always a a a great event. There's gonna be some great presenters, so, really look forward to the event. Great. Thanks so much, Rory, for sharing those insights, and thank you for joining us. Check the congress program for Rory's session time, and look out for our next video. Thanks, guys.