Post by corsair67 on Aug 29, 2007 11:53:38 GMT 12
Wow, that'd look good on the CV! 
Now, an MBA for arms buyers
Brendan O'Keefe | August 28, 2007.
COST blowouts and technical troubles in some of Australia's most controversial defence purchases have prompted a university course for those who aspire to manage the multi-billion-dollar deals.
The Queensland University of Technology will next year offer an executive masters of business administration in complex project management, mainly to staff from the course's chief sponsor - the Defence Materiel Organisation, the government body that buys Australia's defence equipment.
The one-year course will be offered to up-and-coming DMO staffers and others from the defence equipment industry.
QUT's business faculty corporate education director Bob O'Connor said the course, to be offered at the university's Canberra campus, was spurred by recent defence project troubles.
Purchases that have attracted criticism include the Seasprite helicopters (software engineering problems, cost blowouts), Abrams tanks (too heavy) and Super Hornet warplanes (too expensive). "It's all symptomatic," Mr O'Connor said. "What the DMO is saying is that there really is no band-aid fix to these issues.
"This is an investment in cultural change, getting the discipline in the organisation and capacity building.
"This course is part of the capacity building."
Labor defence spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon welcomed the course: "For too long the DMO has lacked sufficient commercial orientation, but the long-term answer is more structural than a one-off university course."
The course was one of the recommendations that came out of a study of the DMO by industrialist Malcolm Kinnaird in 2003.
The specialist executive MBA will be open to between 25 and 40 students.
The DMO will pay the $80,000 course fees for its employees. Other sponsors are manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Tallis, the British Ministry of Defence and the US Defence Department.
Now, an MBA for arms buyers
Brendan O'Keefe | August 28, 2007.
COST blowouts and technical troubles in some of Australia's most controversial defence purchases have prompted a university course for those who aspire to manage the multi-billion-dollar deals.
The Queensland University of Technology will next year offer an executive masters of business administration in complex project management, mainly to staff from the course's chief sponsor - the Defence Materiel Organisation, the government body that buys Australia's defence equipment.
The one-year course will be offered to up-and-coming DMO staffers and others from the defence equipment industry.
QUT's business faculty corporate education director Bob O'Connor said the course, to be offered at the university's Canberra campus, was spurred by recent defence project troubles.
Purchases that have attracted criticism include the Seasprite helicopters (software engineering problems, cost blowouts), Abrams tanks (too heavy) and Super Hornet warplanes (too expensive). "It's all symptomatic," Mr O'Connor said. "What the DMO is saying is that there really is no band-aid fix to these issues.
"This is an investment in cultural change, getting the discipline in the organisation and capacity building.
"This course is part of the capacity building."
Labor defence spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon welcomed the course: "For too long the DMO has lacked sufficient commercial orientation, but the long-term answer is more structural than a one-off university course."
The course was one of the recommendations that came out of a study of the DMO by industrialist Malcolm Kinnaird in 2003.
The specialist executive MBA will be open to between 25 and 40 students.
The DMO will pay the $80,000 course fees for its employees. Other sponsors are manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Tallis, the British Ministry of Defence and the US Defence Department.
