Ipswich City Council has introduced a six-part webinar series, open to all businesses, to look at how different industries are managing to meet their customers’ needs during the pandemic and beyond.
The webinars, which are designed to help support local industry, brings together industry champions from diverse sectors to share their insights and experiences in surviving, and thriving, during extraordinary circumstances.
The first four webinars in the six-part series have featured a diverse cross-section of 22 experts from across the defence, manufacturing, government, industry, tertiary education and training sectors, with industry leaders sharing their experiences and advice. To date, more than 190 people have tuned in to the panel discussions.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the immediate impacts for many businesses were obvious; a large number of customer-facing businesses closed, either temporarily or permanently, unemployment numbers rose and new social distancing and restrictions caused major changes in how the public interacted with businesses.
Now, a few months on, the ripple effects of the worldwide shutdown are becoming more apparent, thanks to ongoing disruptions in global production and delays in shipping.
Ability to adapt is key
However, locally-based defence manufacturing and supply, advanced manufacturing, and training and educational facilities, have been able to continue to meet their current markets, while looking to the future to source new customers thanks to their ability to adapt, their rapid change management strategies and their willingness to collaborate.
This has been particularly true of the defence industry, which has needed to ensure day-to-day workflow and outputs were being met, while still protecting the health and safety of their people and supporting local suppliers and manufacturers.
With uncertain production outputs from overseas factories, as well as major delays in the shipping and delivery of key building and maintenance components, has meant an increase in opportunities for local suppliers.
To facilitate this, and to continue to encourage investment in the region, Ipswich City Council’s Industry Development team has taken a proactive approach, bringing together expert panels to look at how some of the biggest defence industry companies have managed these changes, and what plans they have in place as they prepare for the road to recovery.
Council commitment is strong
Mayor Teresa Harding, who has worked extensively with the military, particularly with the RAAF’s F-111 fighter jets, said council is committed to providing a boost for local industry across a range of sectors, including defence.
“This council takes our advocacy role seriously, and we will capitalise on every opportunity to showcase the benefits of investing in Ipswich,” she said.
“We are in a strategic corridor between a major primary production area and an international port, with a vast supply of greenfield land.
“This has been the basis of our strong manufacturing and defence sectors in Ipswich, and we have a lot of experienced tradespeople with the right skill sets based locally.
“Ipswich has welcomed the Australian Defence Force here for over 80 years, and we want to continue to build on that as part of our proud Ipswich culture.”
Webinars delve into challenges
The first four webinar sessions delved into the challenges faced by experts in the different sectors during the restrictions, how they collaborated with other industry experts and what tactics they’ve employed to ensure business continuation and ongoing resilience.
Some of the most consistent messaging from the panel centred on; cutting business expenditure where possible, limiting corporate travel and reducing their marketing expenditure.
According to the experts, micromanaging your budget is essential to manage expenditure, as is reviewing slow-moving product lines. Another crucial factor is managing your workforce and working with your customers.
Paul Cooper from Rinstrum said webinars such as the series run by the Industry Development team were the sort of collaboration industry needed more of.
Mr Cooper is also creating new opportunities for businesses to collaboration after being been tasked by the federal minister to create a manufacturing industry response to COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 Manufacturing Response Register has been launched and is free for businesses to register. We currently have 2,500 businesses registered with around 60 connections being made each day with businesses starting to work together,” he said.
Still opportunity to get involved
Two more webinars are scheduled and will feature a panel of experts from across the defence, manufacturing, innovation, technology and industry sectors, each of whom will share their challenges, responses and strategies for maintaining resilience and managing business capabilities during COVID-19. They are:
Defence Sector | Innovation, Technology, R&D Collaboration – 30 September 2020, 11am to 12.30pm.
Resilient Industries Beyond COVID-19 – 22 October 202, 1pm to 3pm.
To find out more, or to book in for upcoming webinars, contact [email protected]
