ANNUAL REPORT December 2011
This year is the culmination of my two years as president of the Northern Division. The past two years have literally flown by and I'm personally happy with the achievements that have been made both nationally and locally during those two years including the Infrastructure Report Card , the new by-laws, the new Code of Ethics, the provision of new Stage 1 and 2 Competency standards, and the push for a National Registration Scheme. This year's theme, Humanitarian Engineering, was another great success, with humanitarian themes and topics being highlighted in all of our events this year. The year started with the Queensland floods and cyclone together the bushfires in Perth and other areas of Australia fostering many opportunities for us to witness and become involved with many humanitarian projects to help all the unfortunate people caught up in these events. I personally enjoyed learning about many of the humanitarian works our Defence forces are engaged in both here in Australia and overseas. Our defence force engineers work in some of the most inhospitable areas of the world designing and constructing new roads, bridges, water supplies and sewerage plants to enhance the lives of many people, with little backup and in some cases much danger. We should all be very proud of these people. National president Merv Lindsay visited the Northern Division in June this year and visited projects in Darwin, Groote Eylandt and McArthur River. It was a pleasure to accompany him on his visit through the Territory and to showcase to him the high quality of projects which are being designed and constructed by our local engineering team members. We were privileged to have Eminent Speakers Ken Browne, James Ball, John Carpenter and Paul Grundy travel to the Northern Division to give presentations this year. We also
had many very informative guest speakers this year speaking on topics ranging from humanitarian projects to humidity control and LED lighting. Our two major functions for the year, the Engineering Excellence awards and the Gala dinner were both resounding successes again this year. Both of these events keep getting bigger and better each year. Congratulations, again to the Excellence award winners and the People in Engineering winners. Our Engineering Week heritage bus tour this year was again a great success, attracting around 60 people and requiring two buses. Special thanks to Peter Poole and Trevor Horman, our two renowned Territory historians, for providing the expert and informative commentary on each of the buses. On a serious note I ask all of you to strive to become chartered as soon as possible. This is very important to Engineers Australia as well as yourselves. This will give your employers and your clients the satisfaction of knowing that you are continuing your professional development and enhancing your Stage 2 competencies. Deputy President Louise McCormick takes over as president at the AGM. I am confident she will be a worthy President and I offer her my full support and wish her all the best for the coming years. In conclusion I wish to thank the Divisional Management Committee members for freely giving their time and for their support during the year. I thank our sponsors, for their generous support and Bronwyn and the other members of the Divisional staff for their effort and support throughout the year. Without these people we would not have a division.
Partners
Len Chappell Northern Division President 2010/2011