AITPM@IPENZ - Last day. Ingenuity now more than ever.

Last day of the conference and I am happy to report on the conference proceedings back from Brisbane. I fully enjoyed my stay in Wellington but... give me Brisbane any day.

The conference day kicked of with keynote speaker Steven Newman, CEO of EROAD. I was hoping that Steven will speak about the work he did on road charging but Steven preferred to speak about future transport systems or as he called it super intelligent transport systems.

The second keynote speaker for the day was Rob Merrifield. Rob has worked for more than 50 years on road construction and management but his passion was always studying the historic development of transportation. From the Diolkos and the other ancient Greek rutways to the 1834 Newcastle upon Tyne railway and other tramway systems in England it seems that archeology takes more and more interest in transport systems of the past.

One of the morning streams was dedicated to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia a joint Technical Society of Engineers Australia and IPENZ New Zealand, formed to further the interests of the railway industry at large and its individual participants. With their upcoming conference CORE 2014 in Adelaide they are directed towards providing leadership for the facilitation and coordination of professionalism in the railway industry and the encouragement of member contributions to the application of railway technology and good management practices.

Michael McKeon from KiwiRai and then Randall Prestige from Target Railway Progress presented current and proposed New Zealand railway projects that will enable more efficient movement of freight and passengers across the country.

Overall the IPENZ Transportation Group 2014 conference was a great opportunity to learn about transport projects from the other side of Tasman sea. There are also  some good opportunities and ideas to enhance the collaboration between IPENZ and AITPM that are worth exploring the following days. I also found some good ideas that we can maybe adopt for our AITPM 2015 conference in Brisbane.

The quest for transport ingenuity is ongoing and more relevant now than ever in the history of 100 years of Engineers of New Zealand.

AITPM@IPENZ Day 3 - Freight, logistics and ... dogs.

Day three of the IPENZ Transportation award and as always with the conferences, people start to feel a bit tired and thinking of all the work that they have left behind.

Luckily there were a few interesting presentations starting with Geoff Dangerfield, CEO of NZ Transport Agency. Geoff presented the work that NZTA is doing to provide for transport solutions for today and tomorrow. He presented the “one network” thinking behind all NZTA actions and focused specifically on freight, where he described the agency’s goal for more freight on fewer trucks.

 

 

Of course he presented the already famous TV road safety ad, part of the wider Safer Journeys strategy.

 

One of the conference streams this morning was dedicated to the Signals NZ user group. The group has recently extended their activities to cover Intelligent Transport Systems to enhance people and freight movement through traffic control and ITS. An interesting fact from the presenters was that in New Zealand enforcement of red light cameras in not yet legal.

The organising committee has set aside some time in the program for delegates to have the chance to go through the “Active Poster Display”. Authors stood beside their posters and gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions and clarify things.

 

Another distinct stream of the day was the presentations of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport a worldwide professional body with presence in more than 100 countries.

 

Finally the day closed with another fairly unique feature, the roundtable presentations. Seven different presentations were set up around tables and repeated three times with a duration of 25 minutes each. That gave the presenters the opportunity to have a true interaction with everyone witch worked quite well for most of them.

 

 

In the case of Jo Draper from NZ Transport Authority was a huge success, where she and her colleague Dean Ingoe from Auckland Transport presented the challenges behind stakeholder consultation on transport projects land acquisition and engaged us in a role playing game that helped everyone understand all the critical factors. As Jo said “when you visit people at their houses, beware, there is always a dog”