What a conference! Thank you for the 192 delegates who joined us in Caloundra for the SEQ Branch Conference. This was our first conference of 2021, and first SEQ Branch Conference since 2017.

Congratulations to Scott Young from Stabilised Pavement of Australia who won best paper for his presentation on overcoming the Rehabilitation Challenge of Thin Existing Pavements using Basegrade Stabilisation. Scott will present his paper at the 2021 Annual Conference to be held in Cairns, 12-14 October.

As usual, our events are successful because of the organisations that support and sponsor IPWEAQ. Spelstormwater is one of these organisations as the 2021 SEQ Branch Conference overall conference sponsor. Spelstormwater further contributed to our conference with Trevor Loffel presenting remotely from Melbourne on the 100 year pipe designs at Bulcock Street Caloundra and in acid sulphate soils.

The Branch Conference dinner was another highlight, hosted in a hanger at the Queensland Air Museum. Surrounded by planes, we enjoyed dinner and a live auction (run by Mark Lamont, IPWEAQ’s Director Information & Resources and Excellence Awards Master of Ceremonies) raising money for Rural Aid. Congratulations to Phil Evans for winning the flight simulator prize, sponsored by Orterra! After dinner, guests were offered the exclusive opportunity to have their photos taken in an F-111 plane. Only 1,200 people per year are offered this privilege, and we thank the Queensland Air Museum for giving us this opportunity and sharing their incredible stories.

A special thank you to our exhibitors for offering delegates an opportunity to hear about and experience what is available to improve local communities. We also appreciate the raffle prizes that were donated by exhibitors for our charity raffle, where we were able to raise over $1,200 for Rural Aid.  

And many thanks to our other conference sponsors: McArthur, Projex Partners, CPM Advisory & Project Management, Shepherd Services, Tonkin and Peak services. We were also delighted to present gifts to members who had achieved an IPWEAQ membership milestone during the last 12 months. Thank you for your ongoing support of IPWEAQ!

Raad Jarjees

IPWEAQ SEQ Branch President