1. How did you first become involved in the trenchless industry?
I became involved in the trenchless industry in January 1991 when Menno Henneveld asked me to establish a society for Trenchless Technology – this took a few months to do as I had never heard of the term trenchless nor had any concept of what it was in my engineering life.
2. Which organisation are you from and how long have you been on the Executive Sub-Committee?
I am from the ASTT and was appointed to the ESC November 2010, at the Singapore conference. Over the past six years, I have also represented Menno Henneveld at some of the past ESC meetings.
3. What has been the most memorable project you worked on?
In mid to late 1991, I was involved in a microtunnelling project in Perth, located in Western Australia, as a part of the infill sewerage program for a reticulation area called Cannington. This work involved the installation of main sewers using an Okumura Super Mini microtunnelling machine that the then water authority owned.
The use of this machine enabled the sewer to be laid without any open cut in a particularly sensitive area that had remembrance trees along its pipe route. Without this trenchless technique being adopted, the trees would have been destroyed and no doubt there would have been outcry from the community.
4. What do you see as the most important role and responsibility of the ISTT?
The ISTT is made up of a family of societies and associations from all over the world. To me the most important thing the ISTT can do is to provide support to all these units by way of ensuring that the same trenchless message is preached to all. Giving technical assistance to the smaller societies is also an important issue.
5. How do industry initiatives such as conferences and publications help you in promoting Trenchless Technology?
The ASTT has been very fortunate in this area. To date, we have hosted two International No-Digs and the third scheduled for 2013. By holding events like these, those who attend get to see, and in some cases touch, the latest technologies available, expand their knowledge on industry best practices as well as their network of key people – both nationally and globally.
The ASTT magazine, Trenchless Australasia, is also a fantastic product that reaches some 3,000 key people in our industry every three months with the latest news and information on products, projects and people.
6. What are some of the main challenges your country is facing with Trenchless Technology and how do you think these can be overcome?
One of the biggest challenges we have is trying to ensure that trenchless operators, as a minimum, have a Certificate 3 in Trenchless Technology. For this to be uniform across Australasia, we need all the large, mainly utility client organisations, to insist on this requirement. If they did then the chances of poor practices would be significantly reduced, which would save everyone a lot of time and money.
