A Long Dive Out Of The Rat Race
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday June 21, 2008
An engineer escapes a world of hotel food and corporate issues, writes Keeli Cambourne.
YVES LETTENS wanted a great career and a great private life.The Belgian-born engineer, who moved to Sydney in 2001, decided last year that he wanted a job that allowed him to use his skills and spend more time with his newborn daughter. "I was [working in the corporate world] travelling a lot. I got sick of having breakfast at hotel chains. And I was saturated with the types of issues I was dealing with at my previous job," he says.Lettens had visited Adelaide regularly and was attracted by its fine, dry climate. Last December he accepted an offer to work with ASC (formerly known as the Australian Submarine Corporation) as a maintenance engineer on Collins Class submarines.He has found enormous job satisfaction in being able to use his engineering skills but he has also rediscovered the joys of family life. Instead of spending hours driving to work each day as he did in Sydney, he can cycle to ASC headquarters in just 10 minutes and more affordable housing in South Australia means the family lives only streets away from the beach. "It was a big learning curve learning to work on the submarines," Lettens says. "But unlike the commercial world where it was just a matter of getting the job done, here there is always a striving for excellence."There are many different systems for which we are responsible, from mechanical to hydraulic, but there is continuous training for us on technical aspects as well as procedures. "It is such a different pace of life. For the first month I was a bit baffled. Everything is slower but it is nice. "Things like fruit and vegetables are cheaper and here I am not paying my life away in tolls. "It is not as muggy as Sydney and we can take the car into the centre of the city without having to pay ridiculous parking fees."Lettens isn't the only interstate migrant to discover the Adelaide lifestyle recently. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says Adelaide was SA's fastest growing local government area in 2006-07, showing a 4.8 per cent increase in population.The bureau's March figures show 12 consecutive months of job growth, full-time jobs rising to 535,200 and the state's unemployment falling to a record low of 4.5 per cent. "The rate of jobs growth in South Australia over the past year has been 3.2 per cent, compared with the national average of 2.7 per cent - achieving one of our key targets in South Australia's Strategic Plan," says SA Employment Minister Paul Caica. Premier Mike Rann says the job scene in SA is on the cusp of an economic bonanza, workers being needed in key industries such as mining, construction and defence capabilities."There are other major defence contracts coming, including the establishment by the army of a mechanised battle group at Edinburgh that will require the construction of new housing and other buildings valued at $620 million."ASC is one of the companies benefiting from the defence boom in SA and has evolved into Australia's largest specialised defence shipbuilding organisation, with naval design and engineering resources. It has two multibillion-dollar, long-term contracts on its books: a 25-year support contract to maintain and enhance the Collins Class submarines for the rest of their operational lives and as shipbuilder in the Air Warfare Destroyer Program.It employs about 1300 staff in SA and WA, including almost 300 engineers and 400 tradespeople, including contractors.And as the build phase of the destroyer program continues to expand, by early next year ASC will need employees in areas including purchasing, production supervision, production design, planning, scheduling, estimating and quality control.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
