TRAINING & EDUCATION
Program Manager for the Bachelor of Business (Management) Program RMIT College of Business Carol Bond and Law discusses how crucial energy is for the future.
Right systems and people key to success: Carol Bond The benefits of the Future Fuels Cooperative Research Centre (FFCRC) are spreading further than what is traditionally regarded as the energy sector. As part of the partnership agreement, the FFCRC is meant to expand its reach into universities by introducing undergraduates to the energy sector. In fulfilling this requirement, partnerships with a range of universities are producing results beyond the research activities comprising the CRC’s core business.
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nergy is at the centre of all our lives, and managing energy is a crucial issue for all businesses, both now and in the future as the transition to net-zero rolls out. Carol Bond is the Program Manager for the Bachelor of Business (Management) Program RMIT College of Business and Law. She is also the Coordinator of the Organisational Experience Course which is the capstone course for the management program. This course is designed as a “Workplace integrated learning or WiL course and requires an industry partner. The FFCRC has been the industry partner for 2021-2022 reaching almost 1000 students each year in Melbourne and Singapore. Many students who take this course are also studying for a degree in engineering, something that bodes well for the energy sector. “Not all of our students are pursuing double degrees with engineering, but even those who are more interested in tourism, supply chain management, or hospitality - everybody in any
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sector - has to deal with energy because businesses are a major consumer of energy,” Carol says. “Domestic use is only 33 to 37 per cent of energy consumption, so a major factor in running any business is managing energy and responding to the energy transition of the future. “So, if businesses don’t start coming to grips with their energy use, where the energy’s coming from, how much its costing them, what they have to pass along to customers or clients, and then how to indoctrinate through their workforces how they are going to think about energy management and energy use, then they are going to be in a very poor position moving into this energy transition already under way.” Because the Organisational Experience course is a WiL experience, students are challenged to engage with a real industry problem that’s focused on management issues. “My well-worn phrase is that you can have all the tech and engineering skills in the world, but if you don’t have systems in place to manage the people in your operation, it’s never going to be The Australian Pipeliner | May 2022
the success you want it to be,” Carol says. “People who are engineers are wonderful and lovely people … but they would be the first to tell you that unless they have taken these business courses, they have not been trained exactly how to manage their businesses.” In 2021, the real-world problem these students had to deal with was the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain project. This project, then in its pilot phase, aimed to produce hydrogen out of coal in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. If it proceeds to a commercial phase, it will need to include carbon capture and storage to sequester the carbon produced from the coal conversion. The problem presented a range of challenges: from change management in the shift from coalburning to generate electricity to hydrogen production, the establishment of a supply chain that runs from the Latrobe Valley to Japan by both road and sea and the hopes of a community devastated by the closing down of what many had considered an industry that would provide jobs for life.
