The electrical industry has been under pressure from both the community and government regulators in recent years to produce more and more energy-efficient products in order to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The pressure to provide a safe working environment and reduce safety incidents is well known to the electrical industry. However, few organisations in the recruitment process seek to identify the individuals who are most likely to cause safety incidents, preferring to focus on managing the work environment.

An electrical safety investigation prompted by the fatalities in the federal insulation scheme has found 15 people are killed and 300 hospitalised each year as a result of preventable electrical accidents in Australian homes.

Australian Industry Group has lodged three Fair Work appeals recently in an endeavour to preserve workplace flexibility.

Recent market research indicates that the optical networking market is growing, projected to reach US$20 billion globally by 2015.

Blade Network Technologies, a data centre ethernet switching company, has implemented Fanfare’s test automation product, iTest, to meet its increasing product development and time-to-market goals. Blade has saved approximately $500,000 in resource and equipment costs, sanity build times and time to market since implementing iTest.

A recent survey of 2700 Australian households has identified that consumers need help from the electrical industry to better understand the benefits of energy efficiency.

The Italian Bilingual School (IBS), located in Sydney’s inner western suburb of Leichhardt, upgraded its teaching facilities earlier this year, with its top priorities being to improve the learning environment and comfort of students, as well as reducing energy consumption. Robert Ruggeri, principal of the school, turned to HPM Legrand, and added BTicino sound diffusion and lighting automation systems to effect these objectives.

The ANZ Bank’s new head office in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct is Australia’s largest single-tenant office building, providing 87,000 m² of floor space that accommodates some 6500 staff.

Electrical industry association Master Electricians Australia is calling for state and federal governments to create a uniform solar feed-in tariff scheme around the country.

In production and work places, potentially explosive atmospheres can develop wherever flammable gases, vapours or dusts are mixed with the oxygen contained in the air.

Industry giant Siemens has publicly stated its support for the Prime Minister’s Task Group on Energy Efficiency report.

At a recent conference, an electrical and energy industry association has called for training and skills shortages to be properly addressed.

Safety is a key focus for the industrial compressed-air solution manufacturer Champion Compressors, a subsidiary of the global Sullair Corporation. Its management considers keeping its workplace safe just as important as meeting its financial objectives.

Chunghwa Telecom Telecommunication Laboratories (CHTTL), the research and development arm of Chungwa Telecom, has selected Spirent to validate the performance, availability, security and scalability (PASS) of cloud computing environments. CHTTL will use Spirent’s expertise in cloud computing testing to enable Chunghwa Telecom to become Taiwan’s largest cloud computing and data centre provider.