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Universities will work with industry as part of a new ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre that will aim to use data science to transform asset maintenance for Australia’s resources sector.

The University of Western Australia will work in partnership with Curtin University who will lead the centre, and in collaboration with CSIRO and the University of Adelaide, and industry partners Alcoa, BHP and Roy Hill, as well as CORE Innovation Hub and the Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia.

The new centre which has been awarded $3.9million in ARC funding was announced today by Federal Minister for Education and Training, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham.

UWA Professor Melinda Hodkiewicz, BHP Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations, said it was a welcome investment from the Federal Government into how asset maintenance would be managed in the future.

“We are excited to be working with such great industry partners Alcoa, BHP and Roy Hill to develop employees that have analytic skills in data science, needed for jobs of the future in the resources sector,” Professor Hodkiewicz said.

UWA Professor Michael Small, CSIRO-UWA Chair of Complex Engineering Systems said being able to effectively use data to create better systems, develop new technology and transform the way maintenance is carried out across the resources sector was critical and the creation of the new centre would allow huge steps to be taken towards this.

ARC Training Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science Director Professor Andrew Rohl, from the Curtin Institute for Computation, said he was delighted to be working with the research and industry partners to improve productivity and asset reliability for the nation’s resources sector.

“The effective maintenance of engineering assets underpins the $205 billion annual export earnings from Australia's resources sector,” Professor Rohl said.

“However, maintenance management practices have changed little in the last 20 years and are ripe for a digital overhaul that will bring developments in computational methods, statistics, applied mathematics and artificial intelligence to determine how, when and why maintenance is conducted.

“The new centre, which will bring together the relevant research and industry expertise, will enable the development and adoption of new practices to improve productivity and asset reliability for industry and to foster a new maintenance technology service sector for national and international markets.”

Planning for the new ARC Training Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science will start immediately.

Media references

Jess Reid (UWA Media and Public Relations Advisor) 08 6488 6876

Yasmine Phillips (Curtin Media Relations Manager) 08 9266 9085 / 0401 103 877