Did you know that it was engineering leaders applying engineering management principles and frameworks that was the catalyst for addressing the COVID-19 outbreaks in aged care?

When COVID-19 started to spread rapidly within Melbourne aged care facilities, a response centre was formed at extremely short notice to stabilise the situation. In that centre were 26+ agencies/organisations with multiple backgrounds, values, terminology, routines and corporate cultures that needed to work together in concert.

In this Engineers Australia event members will hear from the engineering leaders that responded to the COVID-19 crisis in aged care, and learn how they applied megatrends of management frameworks, servant leadership and engineering principles to:

• Identify synergies and value streams to coordinate resources across the numerous stakeholder agencies.
• Predicted the outbreak to get ahead of the disease.
• Developed protocols that arrested and stabilised the situation.

The event will address key technical leadership and management principles including:

1. Key underpinning threads of management and leadership during emergency situations.
2. The application of engineering principles for risk assessment, prediction and prioritisation of deployed workforce elements.
3. How to build an aircraft while it is flying amidst of fog and mountains – e.g. how to safely navigate and be productive amidst severe uncertainty.

This event will benefit all professional engineers, including executives, managers and engineers at all career stages working across multiple stakeholders and/or working within a dynamic framework, including in time critical and emergency situations. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from engineers that responded to and ultimately successfully addressed the COVID-19 outbreak in Victorian aged care.

Colonel Jason Cooke

Senior Australian Defence Force Liaison Officer
Victorian Aged Care Response Centre
Joint Task Force 629
Department of Defence

Colonel Cooke is the Deputy Director Soldier Modernisation System Program Office within the Department of Defence, an experienced project manager skilled in government procurement and Defence’s Capability Lifecycle for equipment used across all three services of the ADF. He also has extensive operational, intelligence and analytical skills within supply chain management gained from over 30 years in the industrial fastener industry. He is a current serving Army Reserve Officer with over 35 years’ experience especially in Domestic Operational. He has been awarded Joint Operational Command Commendations when deployed as the Chief of Staff on Operation VICFIRES ASSIST in 2009 (silver) and as the senior ADF Liaison Officer on Operation COVID 19 ASSIST (gold) spearheading Defence’s support to the VACRC.

Lieutenant Colonel Sandeep (Sunny) Jadhav FIEAust

Chief Engineer
Land Vehicles Systems Branch | CGSVSPO
Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group
Department of Defence

Lieutenant Colonel Jadhav is an Electrical Engineer with multiple master’s degrees. He is currently the Chief Engineer for the Commercial and General Service Vehicle Systems Program Office within Land Vehicle Systems Branch at the Capability Acquisitions and Sustainment Group. He is a Charted Professional Engineer and practicing Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Prior to joining the Army, he spent 12 years in industry as a systems engineer including at Siemens Ltd and Fujitsu. During his Army career, he has worked with and within all the major Defence capability development organisations (Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Army Headquarters, and Capability Development Group). Lieutenant Colonel Jadhav has published a number of research papers on Systems Engineering and maintains a strong association with industry and academia to promote STEM skills with junior Australian Defence Force officers.