2019 ISCA Connect Conference

In October, VET Cadet Christine Saunders had an exciting opportunity to attend the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA) Connect Conference in Melbourne with members of her placement team. Here Christine shares about her experience at the conference.

On 17 October, members of the Regional Rail Project’s Regional Development team attended the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA) ISCA Connect conference in Melbourne.

ISCA connect is a three day conference that focuses on environment and sustainability in the infrastructure field. This year many of the panels highlighted the importance of social sustainability.

Some standout presentations included Brandi Hudson’s, CEO of the Independent Maori Statutory and member of Auckland Council key note speech around integrating Indigenous values into the built environment to show respect and regard for first nation people.

On the Social Sustainability panel we heard from Alexia Hilbertidou, founder and CEO of Girlboss NZ. Girlboss NZ’s mission is to close the gender gap in Science, Technology, Maths, and Leadership.

In the afternoon, Regional Rail team members Dr Jane Inglis, Maxine Greenfield and Royston Douglas presented on the Regional Rail Project’s approach to engagement with Aboriginal stakeholders. The presentation touched on return on investment from the Project’s Aboriginal Working Group and steps the team will take in the future to further engage our stakeholders.

They took a story telling approach to the presentation to pay respect to Aboriginal culture and ways of communicating.

I really enjoyed attending the conference and learning from each presenter on how they view social procurement and sustainability and hearing about the steps they are taking to make these lines of work into business as usual in their organisations.

If you are interested in learning more about ISCA please visit https://www.isca.org.au/