Chapter President’s message
There has been a lot going on since my last e-News in late June, just prior to the awards (including me taking a couple of weeks off followed by National Council, which in part explains my absence from these pages of late).
First of all, thanks to all of you who responded to my call for better membership participation at the awards. We’ve had over a dozen responses to date, and it would be great to see more. For those of you who’ve shown interest in helping out with some of our activities, we’ll be in touch soon. If you are still thinking about it, please give the Chapter Office a call.
The Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) is hosting a 10 day program in October called Open State which includes the return of the Festival of Ideas, now being run outside of government.
We have been invited by DPC to host one of the day long sessions on the theme of Future Cities. The program is being formulated at the moment, but it’s great to see that the role of architects in shaping our cities is being recognized at the highest level of our government. See https://openstate.com.au/about-open-state/ It’s also worth noting that cities will be a theme that will be pursued more generally by our new National President Professor Ken Maher.
The Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI) is in the middle of revamping its procurement processes. It would be fair to say that there has been a fair bit of concern in the profession around what the new format might look like. However the discussions in which several of us have been involved with senior DPTI staff indicate that they are looking to a meaningful engagement with us to get the right results.
We are working closely with the ACA and Consult Australia in engaging with DPTI, and will keep you informed of developments.
It is also worth mentioning that this conversation is running in parallel with discussions we are having with the Industry Advocate, Ian Nightingale, on getting value for our economy from government spending. For those of you who may not have seen the reference in Hansard to a recent speech that Treasurer Koutsantonis delivered on this subject, see here
And finally, earlier this month we hosted the first of what will be a series of forums between the profession and our two universities, looking at how we can work more closely together. Around 50 people attended which was great to see, although I’d have to say not many attendees were those who own practices – from what I could tell, with a few notable exceptions, it was mainly staff!
And there was also a notable lack of small practitioners as well.
This is a really important initiative that needs to be supported by the people that run and own practices, small as well as big. It goes to the heart of what we’ve been focusing on since I took up this role – increasing the relevance of our profession.
Research and practice go hand in hand. Indeed, we all do research in some form as we do our jobs on a daily basis. The ability to give it strength through stronger ties with the university sector cannot be overstated. It has the capacity to provide a strong foundation to our profession, and our ability to argue the case for quality design through an evidence base.
Our next event in the series will look in more detail at what types of research we can do together. So when you see the invitation come across your computer, think seriously about attending.
David Homburg, SA Chapter President