No-Dig Down Under underway

The Gold Coast No-Dig will have an impressive 5,000 square metres of exhibition space (as big as the Sydney ISTT conference in 2013), with 1,500 expected delegates and trade visitors. This is fantastic for a regional event and extremely positive for the ASTT. Conferences are always a big event on the Society’s calendar, but this particular conference is made even more important because of some of the special partnering initiatives that will be occurring at the Gold Coast, which are focused on industry education. The foremost of these initiatives is the launch of the first three of our new training packages that we are offering the industry, developed in association with the North American Society for Trenchless Technology (NASTT). In addition, No-Dig Down Under 2015 will welcome the involvement of students from the University of Queensland through a partnering arrangement that aims at encouraging the next generation of professionals into the trenchless industry in the future. As I noted in my inaugural letter, we are working hard to implement many measures to provide value for members and drive the society forward. So far the Special Interest Group (SIG) guidelines have been launched, and the aforementioned training program agreement with the NASTT has been signed. These initiatives will be continuously developed going forward, with the full support of the society. I would also like to draw your attention to the perhaps less obvious changes that have been made to our Trenchless Australasia magazine. You may see that the cover of this edition has had some design changes. These changes have been made to reflect the enhanced editorial content of Trenchless Australasia, in-line with the overall aim of delivering better value to our members. I would like to recognise our GSP publishing team for the great work they have been doing in recent editions, improving our society’s already great magazine. A big thanks also for Sudipta Basu, Jeff Lawson and Scott Stevens for stepping up and volunteering their time on the newly established Trenchless Australasia editorial board – this helps make the difference. Recently, the ASTT has expanded the coverage of the trenchless forums “’ which have occurred regularly in New Zealand “’ out to Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. The forums, which are intended to provide the trenchless industry with local networking and education opportunities, have been very successful. The plan is to extend these forums even further to the remaining states and, with the support of the industry, into the provinces on a regular basis throughout the year. These types of events are only possible because of the valuable time put in by our member volunteers, and the sponsorship of our corporate members. I would like to extend our thanks to those individual members who have helped make these state forums occur. In particular I would like to recognise the input of the State Councillors: Ben Crosby, Nabil Issa and Chris Frangos for making these happen. I would like to encourage all of our members to make the most of our events, big and small. Importantly, I would like to encourage our members to actively take part and contribute to making them a success, which will help our society to become the best organisation it can be. I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can in September at the Gold Coast No-Dig.