Jeff Pace, Secretary for the ASTT, has extended his welcome to a number of the association’s newest members.
New Members
On behalf of the ASTT, I extend a warm welcome to the following new members.
Corporate Members – Australia
Michael Ellenrieder from IMPREG (Australia) Pty Ltd
Devan Russell from Aussie Drill Kings Pty Ltd
Individual Members – Australia
Aaron Gilboy from Stantec
Individual Members – New Zealand
Howard Simpson from Christchurch City Council
Salve Velasco from Christchurch City Council
ASTT Council nominations
The call for nominations to Council was emailed to all ASTT Members on 5 January 2023. The same notice was also published by Prime Creative Media on the Trenchless Australasia website on 12 January, 2023 also it was mentioned in the e-news dated 19 January 2023. The results will be published in the next issue and all positions will be ratified later this year at the AGM.
2023 membership fee payments
In early December, the majority of the membership would have received their tax invoices for the 2023 membership year through our new automated database system. These fees were due to be paid on 1 January 2023. It was pleasing to see that the number of members that renewed their memberships on time was an increase from last year. The PayPal method is now the most popular.
For those that have still not paid, can you please expedite thus avoiding cancellation of your membership. Also, all members that change their email address or postal address are requested to let me know so that the ISTT and ASTT databases can be updated, these are the databases that amongst other things deter-mine distribution of the magazines.
For those of you that no longer work for the companies that pay your membership renewals, can you please let me know that you have left and also who the replacement person is for your membership.
International bank fees
For those members living outside Australia that need to pay the annual membership renewal fee in Aus-tralian dollars will in most cases experience an international transaction bank fee. It is important to ensure that you add this fee to your transaction thus avoiding not paying the nominated amount. An international transaction fee is charged to you, the consumer, by your bank whenever you acquire something in a foreign currency. While all of these charges are applied to you the members, they are also to be added to your transaction when you make a purchase online from a foreign vendor. In most cases the general fee the banks are charging is $10. For example, in some cases your membership renewal fee for someone living in New Zealand is AUD$540, when you do the bank transfer the bank charges you $10, which means the ASTT only received $530. It is up to you to ensure the bank fee is added to your international bank transfer.
Relining specifications
In September 2020, Blair Telfer your New Zealand Councillor established our second Special Interest Group (SIG) on the basis that this SIG represents the linings group in general. One of the original objectives of the group was to develop specifications for pipe lining that the industry, clients, consultants, asset owners, can use with confidence to ensure a quality product and that are appro-priate & applicable to Aust & NZ conditions.
Non-members can get a feel for the contents covered by this Specification by referring to our website, refer: https://www.astt.com.au/guidelines/. All ASTT members, as a membership benefit have full access to the entire 32 page document by accessing it through https://astt.wildapricot.org/ASTT-Guidelines. The ASTT wishes to thank Blair and all those that contributed to the development of this specification.
Guidelines Standards and Specifications Review
It has been a long time since we developed the 2010 versions of HDD, pipe bursting, microtunnelling Guidelines, Standards and Specifications onto our website. In 2020, we introduced our comprehensive Microtunnelling Design Guidelines Sewer (MDG-S) and now it is time to completely review the other documents we have on the ASTT website as listed at https://astt.wildapricot.org/ASTT-Guidelines.
No-Dig Down Under 2023 Brisbane
No doubt most of you are aware that we are now back to our regular biannual frequency of holding our National Conferences now that COVID-19 seems to be under control. To this end our next National Conference and Exhibition will be held over September 12 to 15, 2023 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. I’m pleased to confirm that the organising committee has approved the conference theme of “Better out-comes through trenchless”. The call for abstracts is now out and submissions will close on 31 March 2023. In my previous report I mentioned that both sponsorship and exhibition space was progressing well ahead of schedule. When I last looked the exhibition was approximately 80 per cent sold and I am confident that the remaining spots will be taken up quickly.
Exhibition sales are still available so if you are interested in exhibiting and do not want to miss out, then please contact Nick Lovering at nick.lovering@primecreative.com.au. More information is also available on the event website: https://nodigdownunder.com.
There are now limited opportunities available with the following locked in thus far. Rob Carr as the Platinum sponsor. Vermeer as a gold sponsor, Interflow and Rockpecker as the Silver sponsors. Sponsorship provides companies highly visible branding opportunities in Australia, New Zealand, and the global trenchless community, with packages that include exhibition space and conference tickets, as well as unique sponsorship.
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This article appeared in the February edition of Trenchless Australasia. Access the digital copy of the magazine here.