One of the biggest events on the Australian fleet calendar is the annual conference and exhibition organised by the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA), and organisers say early bookings for the 2023 event are indicating a bumper turnout, of both participants and exhibitors.
The theme of this year’s event is “The Shifting Tides of Fleet Management”, in recognition of transitions requiring fleet managers to rethink how they move employees and goods.
A keynote speakers will be Ben Selwyn, a director of automotive, at ACA Research. He said his talk will be informed by findings from a fresh ACA survey of fleet managers in Australia and New Zealand.
Selwyn, who is scheduled to talk at the opening of the event on the topic “Big picture trends and future developments”, said he’ll be bringing knowledge from industry leaders on how they are transforming their fleets to meet sustainability goals and community expectations and business imperatives.
“The world is changing very quickly at the moment, particularly when we talk about electric vehicles, and the process of electrification,” said Selwyn, adding the new research and his talk will cover, “How organisations are getting vehicles and managing vehicles, managing infrastructure, how they are engaging utility providers to understand how to effectively manage the charging side of things, even how they are setting up reimbursement policies for staff using and charging EVs.”
The beauty of a conference and exhibition like the IPWEA Fleet event said Selwyn is that participants get to step outside their own regular network into an arena with new ideas.“They can tap into the latest thinking and see what new products there are, whether it be software or vehicles.
“It’s also the attraction just for conversations you’re able to have with people. I think it can get forgotten just how important that is,” said Selwyn.
To be sure, the 2023 IPWEA Fleet event is a great opportunity for fleet people to rebuild their professional networks after a couple of challenging years disrupted by COVID. Delegate numbers are expected to be around 180, and there will be about 35 exhibitors.
The 2023 conference and exhibition runs from Monday afternoon March 27 until March 29.
The event has found a great home at the Brisbane Royal International Convention Centre and Showground in centrally located Fortitude Valley. The venue is just 1.5km from the city’s CBD and 15 minutes from Brisbane Airport. The event has been held here each year since 2019, excepting for in 2021 when the event when virtual to account for COVID restrictions. The inaugural IPWEA Fleet conference was held in 2017.
See Fleet News Group’s calendar of events for more details of the IPWEA conference and other fleet industry events.
