‘It’s already made a massive difference’ – building careers with the Professional Certificate.
Finn Macleod, a Construction and Maintenance Engineer from City of Swan, Western Austalia, is the latest in a long line of the council’s staff to complete IPWEA’s online Professional Certificate in Asset Management Planning.
Macleod said, “A large chunk of our asset management team has done the course, and a lot of us who aren’t even in asset management anymore are doing it.
“Our previous Executive Assistant to the Executive Manager of Operations has been doing the course, because they’re dealing with councillors and need to relay that information and have a better understanding of asset management.
“Everyone is coming back with the same feedback: it’s a really well-run course and you learn a lot about the process.
“I think it’s really good for the whole division to learn where a lot of the information for asset management is coming from, and how they’re deciding the budgets.”
Having graduated from the Professional Certificate in November, Macleod credits the course with helping him score an exciting opportunity to experience asset management and public works in Australia’s largest shire.
“It has definitely helped my career. I recently applied for a secondment up to the Shire of East Pilbara, which I’m going on next week, and they made a specific comment about my asset management background and training that I’d done being the reason they want me.
“It’s already made a massive difference; they selected me because of that,” Macleod said.
The course has also made a difference to how he approaches writing asset management plans.
“I’ve gone back to edit the bridge asset management plan, and it’s been made a lot easier to write having done the course.
“A lot of stuff going into it isn’t that difficult to understand, but I really learnt why I was doing it and the real benefits from it,” Macleod explained.
He said the lessons from the course were beginning to show in the way the council collected its asset data.
“I’ve noticed from the course, and people who have done the course prior have said, that we really need to improve our data collection.
“Doing the course has really shown that.”
To date, more than 1500 people from 786 organisations and across eight countries have completed the online Professional Certificate in Asset Management Planning. The next course kicks off in March – ipwea.org/ProfCertAMPlanning
*Copy supplied by IPWEA Australasia
