A quarter of a century ago, hardly anyone had even heard of trenchless drilling technology or HDD, and even fewer people had any idea how vital it would be to the multitude of pipe laying and cabling projects that were to come.

The Balemi brothers saw the potential in the new technology and bought their first Grundomat thruster in 1986. They’ve stuck with trenchless drilling during the 24 years since, accumulating hands-on experience along the way. Their company, JB Attachments, is now one of the leading suppliers of trenchless equipment in Australia and New Zealand.

JB Attachments Managing Director Australia Simon Balemi said “We were pioneers of it and we now sell everything from the smallest to the largest drills in the world.”

JB Attachments offers a complete end-to-end drilling solution to contractors, including:

• Directional drill steering tools
• Drilling fluid additives
• Rock hammers
• Mixing systems
• Recyclers
• Vacuum excavation systems
• Fluid mud pumps
• Winches
• Pipe bursting equipment
• Root-cutters
• Auger boring equipment
• Microtunnelling machines
• Ground-penetrating radar
• Bore planner software
• Location equipment
• Replacement drill pipe for any make or model of drill.

“And besides all of that we also import parts and accessories for everything we sell and we’ll manufacture parts like specific drill heads and reamers to suit different geologies,” Mr Balemi said.

“We also back everything we sell with full operator training and support because we can supply the best equipment in the world but it’s useless without the best training to go with it.

“We teach the lot from health and safety to operation techniques to site clean-up and reinstatement. We do training schools onsite as well and we back the operators we train with advice and troubleshooting when needed. There are a lot of technical issues to learn and big safety issues too – both in the classroom and in the field.”

Over the last two decades, JB Attachments has been a principal supplier of HDD equipment to major infrastructure projects throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, including a major fibre optic rollout on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu in 2003–2004. That project saw the company supplying not only directional drills, mole plows, rock saws, and excavators, but also training all drilling crews and dealing with a wide variety of terrain, including soil, rock, sand, and even coral.

With these years of experience behind it, JB Attachments is now uniquely positioned to supply machinery, training, and support to the rollout of fibre optic cable in Australia and New Zealand in the coming years.

“The Australian Government is considering rolling out $A40 billion of fibre for high-speed broadband. We’re extremely well placed to provide the equipment and support for a sizeable chunk of this massive project,” Mr Balemi said.

“It’s not just about contractors buying a machine – it’s about how you’re going to support that machine and train people to drive it. We’re prepared for the project when it comes in respect of having an adequate number of machines available – new and good used equipment – and all the back-up behind that.

“To give you some idea of the scale of the project, what we call the ‘lead-in’ work on its own is going to be huge. That’s where you’re connecting individual homes and businesses to the cables laid under the street.

“It’s estimated there may be about nine million lead-ins to do in Australia and about ten years of work. And you need to use Trenchless Technology for that because you can’t just push the fibre through the existing phone cabling conduits, which are too small to accommodate it.”

“We will supply everything from the smaller equipment that might be used for lead-in work, to the larger machines that would be used to lay the main cabling under whole streets, to the really big machines that you would use to drill under rivers, etc.”

The advantages of HDD over open-cut methods are obvious – it is less disruptive to traffic, less damaging to the environment, it involves fewer vehicles and man-hours, and reinstatement costs are greatly reduced.

However, despite advances in HDD technology, underground drilling can still be a tricky business, which is why the technical know-how and hands-on support JB Attachments offers can be invaluable to the contractor.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility extends well beyond making the sale. We always ensure we sell the right machine for the job and then back it to the hilt with training, parts, service, and, if necessary, on-the-spot advice,” Mr Balemi said.