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s E Q b r a nc h p r e s i d e nt ’s R e p or t At the time of writing this report, SEQ branch members Andrew Ryan and Gleb Kolenbet will have landed in the USA as part of the 2016 IPWEA International Study Tour sponsored by the IPWEAQ Foundation. Andrew and Gleb will visit up to eight Local Government Authorities in the USA, Spain and the Netherlands. They will also attend the annual American Public Works conference which attracts around 5,000 delegates. This tour offers an opportunity to share engineering innovations and best practices, town planning knowledge and experience as well as establishing contacts and new networks of learning. Andrew and Gleb are also looking forward to sharing tales of our beautiful part of the world. This leads to a message about the benefits of being a member of IPWEAQ and gaining or maintaining your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and becoming a Registered Professional Engineer in Queensland (RPEQ). While an international study tour offers
a significant number of CPD hours, there are other more local opportunities to achieve your 150 hours over a three year period. These include attending a range of IPWEAQ courses on offer for both technical and non-technical subjects and preparing and presenting a paper at an IPWEAQ conference or attending as a delegate. The next major opportunities for you to register your CPD hours in SEQ are the state conference in Brisbane, 8-10 November and for the SEQ Branch conference at Logan, 9-10 May 2017. Planning has already started for this event with the theme, ‘Building on Smart Solutions’ and we invite you to consider a 20-25 min presentation to your peers. Branch conferences are a great way to develop your public speaking skills amidst the supportive environment of your local branch committee. Along with the rest of the IPWEAQ board, I recently attended the NQ Branch conference in Lucinda and benefited from a variety of interesting and innovative presentations. The ingenuity of our
members never ceases to amaze me, particularly those operating alone in remote locations. Thank you to the NQ for your hospitality. For SEQ Branch members, we are planning a half day branch meeting first week of October 2016 and another in late February 2017 leading up to the branch conference in Logan, 9-10 May which will be followed by LOGOV, 11-12 May 2017. More information on these events will be sent to members shortly. Finally, I invite those of you with an interest in climate change to view the CoastAdapt (beta version) website launched by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF). I have been involved with the End User Reference group for this suite of tools which aims to assist with explanations about climate change for your audience. NCCARF invite you to review and test the website and provide feedback on its quality and utility. Murray Erbs SEQ Branch President
Our members enjoy a
strong sense of community through our proactive branch network.
SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND BRANCH
Engineering for Public Works | September 2016