Speakers

Presenters Day One

David Dreverman

Bio

David Dreverman is the Executive Director, River Management at the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. David joined the Murray-Darling Basin Commission in 2000 as Manager, Assets, and was appointed General Manager, River Murray Water of the Commission in 2003. He transferred to the Authority in his current role when it assumed the functions of the former Commission in December 2008.

The River Murray assets include major water storages, locks and weirs, barrages and salt interception schemes and are located from Dartmouth dam, in north-east Victoria, to the Murray Mouth in South Australia and on the Darling River upstream to Menindee Lakes. The River Management division directs the sharing of waters of the River Murray between the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia including directing the investigation, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the River Murray operations assets. The division also undertakes water resource modelling to support many of the Authority’s programs including Basin Planning and The Living Murray.

Prior to joining Murray-Darling Basin Commission, David worked in the consulting engineering industry; with SMEC, Hydro Electric Commission, Tasmania and Australian Power and Water. For more than thirty five years David has been involved with large dam and hydro power projects, both in Australia and overseas.

Adrian Spall

Bio

Adrian is a Director within the Water Group of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria. Adrian’s present responsibilities include delivering on a range of water information initiatives designed to improve the management and accessibility of water resource information across the State, particularly in the areas of water availability, quality and use within Victoria.

Since 2005, Adrian has had extensive involvement in national water information initiatives, including as Chair of eWater CRC’s Participant Forum and a founding member of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Jurisdictional Reference Group on Water Information. Adrian came into this role with a long history in policy development and regulation and the designing and implementing of change programs across a range of organisations and industries in such areas as land management, telecommunications and water. Previous roles have seen Adrian work on structural, regulatory and institutional reform arising out of the Victorian Government’s water reform policy agenda, including the development of a new regulatory framework for the independent pricing of water.

While with the former Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Adrian delivered a range of programs focussed on the emerging e-commerce opportunities of the late 1990s and on delivering land information and transactions online. This included work on the creation of VicMap as the State’s underlying mapping information product. Prior to this, Adrian managed a national public education campaign to publicise the reform and reorganisation of Australia’s national telephone numbering system to an 8-digit numbering scheme.

Adrian holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and a Master of Business Administration.

Paul Hannah

Bio

Born in Otago, New Zealand Paul’s educational background includes Design Engineering, a Bachelor of Science (Physical Geography) and a Bachelor of Arts (Design Studies). The last six years that Paul has spent working for a local Government organization in Dunedin – Otago Regional Council (ORC) has been varied. He has worked in the areas of biosecurity pest plant and animal work, enforcement, environmental monitoring, national and regional oil spill response, and flood mitigation. These duties included working from motorbikes, 4WDs, boats, helicopters and abseiling off cliffs. For the last three years Paul has worked within the ORC Hydrology team managed by Pete Stevenson. The point that he started working full time with the team coincided with an operational transition to almost exclusive use of acoustic Doppler technology for measuring river flows, opening up an opportunity for Paul to specialise in ADCP deployment. Work at over 100 water level/flow sites scattered across the Otago region along with corresponding rainfall sites, and groundwater recording stations has ensured a varied and steep learning curve for Paul over the past three years.

A strong interest in product design associated with his work in environmental monitoring keeps Paul busy developing equipment and methodology to enable easier and more accurate data collection. Equipment he has developed to date include a groundwater sampling flow cell, portable cableway towers and hand winch systems, an kayak ADCP platform, environmental housings, laser distance targets, and a waratah driver/ hand winch system for continuous loop ADCP gaugings.

Phil Downes

Bio

Phil completed New Zealand Certificates in Land Surveying and Civil Engineering during the 1980s and in 2000 became a Registered Engineering Associate. During his early years he gained experience in cadastral and engineering surveying, and then in 1989 joined Environment Canterbury. It was here that he transferred into hydrology, the dream job, driving jet boats and flying the Southern Alps of the South Island servicing the council’s rainfall network. Phil has been involved in all aspects of operational hydrology from installing, monitoring, processing, and auditing sites through to the present day management of the hydrometric network at Environment Canterbury.

Phil is also involved in the group responsible for developing a national qualification for hydrology in New Zealand and developing national environmental standards.

Kevin Oberg

Bio

Kevin Oberg is the national coordinator for hydroacoustics for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Office of Surface Water (OSW). Kevin leads OSW’s efforts to develop new methods in the application of acoustics to hydraulic and hydrologic measurements in the USGS Water Mission Area. He also directs OSW efforts to provide technical training, technical support, and quality assurance of hydroacoustics methods within the USGS and internationally.

Kevin collaborates on research topics with colleagues in the USGS, various international hydrological services, and academia on topics that include sampling strategies for ADCP discharge measurements, velocity mapping with ADCPs, the measurement and analysis of density currents using ADCPs, modelling of the flow disturbance created by ADCPs, and the application of acoustic profilers to mean flow and turbulence measurements. He currently collaborates with colleagues at the National University of Cordoba, National University of Littoral (UNL) and International Centre for Large River Studies, University of Illinois, and Environment Canada on these and other topics. He has published numerous journal articles and USGS reports. He and his co-authors were the recipients of the 2012 International Association for Great Lakes Research Chandler-Misener Award. The Chandler-Misener Award is presented annually to the author or authors of the peer-reviewed paper in the current volume of the Journal of Great Lakes Research judged to be “most notable”.

Kevin has taught many classes on the application of hydroacoustics for hydraulic measurements in the USGS and for many other agencies, including Environment Canada, New Zealand Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Norwegian Power and Energy Directorate (NVE), Swedish Meteorologic and Hydrologic Institute (SMHI), and the Environment Agency of England and Wales (EA).

Mark Randall

Bio

Originally from the UK, Mark came to Australia in 2004 after graduating with a First class Zoology degree. In 2006 he started work with Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources and Mines as a cadet hydrographer. Based in Mareeba, his current work is focused in the remote Cape York region where he loves the challenges associated with managing such an isolated gauging station network.

Not long after joining the department he set about learning how to use ADCPs, primarily as a way to avoid getting into crocodile infested waters! He extended his ADCP knowledge to the measurement of suspended sediment and assisted in the definition of a departmental work procedure.

In 2009 Mark received Bureau of Meteorology funding to manage three, one week courses providing hands-on ADCP training to 95% of his department’s hydrographic staff. More recently, further Bureau of Meteorology funding has enabled him to establish the national standard for ADCP measurements, which is the focus of his presentation.

Rohan Oliver

Bio

Rohan Oliver is the Regional Manager for Thiess Services Hydrographic Group in Northern Victoria and is based in Kerang. He manages 30 staff located in five offices across the North of the State.

Rohan commenced work in 1993 as an Assistant Hydrographer for the Rural Water Commission in Tatura and since that time has gained extensive experience working in a variety of locations throughout Victoria. He has acquired a detailed knowledge of hydrographic practices and the water industry in general which has enabled him to progress to a senior management position with Thiess Services. During this period the Victorian water industry was privatised with Thiess Services purchasing the Rural Water Corporations’ Hydrographic section. This transition has enabled Rohan to gain exposure to a more varied and demanding client base and a wealth of experience managing water resource networks covering catchments from alpine to estuarine. He has been at the cutting edge of technological changes during this period and is an expert in the deployment of acoustic technology for discharge measurement and in situ data collection.

The climatic conditions of the previous ten years has given hydrographers exposure to a wide variety of conditions from the extremes of a prolonged drought to record breaking flows. Rohan has had firsthand experience dealing with these extremes and has been at the forefront of developing and adapting technology to provide solutions to the water industry and emergency services agencies. In his current role, Rohan is responsible for ensuring that all data collected by his group is fit for purpose and to the highest standard. Rohan has a great understanding of the value of this data set and the benefit in both accuracy and methodology that is gained through adapting and enhancing new technology.

David Spiers

Bio

David Spiers is a Water Assessment Officer with the Department of Primary, Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (Tas). After completion of an Honours Degree in Zoology in 2002, David commenced work with Water Assessment Branch in 2003, initially working primarily in the field of environmental assessment. As funding and priorities changed within the branch he moved into water quality, then into hydrometrics, and most recently to groundwater.

David starting his professional career as a development biochemist at CSL back in 1984. A key component in this field is the ability to the build “stuff” necessary for analytical work, usually out of whatever is at hand. Additionally, with many years of tinkering with, and building boats, and mucking around with bikes, he has developed quite an aptitude for making bespoke equipment.

However, a lack of interest in the field and a desire to see some other bits of the world saw him leave biochemistry and travel extensively through Asia. These adventures ultimately culminated in a five year stint of skiing, fishing and bike racing in Japan, while pretending to be an English teacher.

This conference presentation looks at how his tinkering skills have been employed to overcome many of the problems the branch has encountered in the use of ADCP equipment, and improve the accuracy and reproducibility of data collection with these instruments.

Garry Leslie

Bio

Garry began his career as a Trainee Hydrographer with State Rivers and Water Supply Commission in 1975 at the Maffra office. Between 1975 and 1981 he was located in several field offices learning the basics of field hydrography and obtained his Certificate of Hydrography from Sydney Technical College in 1980. Between 1981 and 1995 Garry operated as a Senior Hydrographer in the South western part of Victoria all the while building his knowledge of field hydrography.

In 1995 Thiess Services bought the hydrographic services unit from the state government. By this point Garry was once again at the Maffra office where he is currently still located. In recent years he has enjoyed the more challenging aspects of computer based field systems.

Wayne Ross

Bio

Wayne initially completed a Bachelor of Applied Science – Natural Resource Management before starting his career as an assistant Hydrographer with Thiess Services, located in the Gippsland office of Maffra. He has continued to work from this office since July 2001, slowly progressing to Senior Hydrographer as he has picked up the necessary skills through training and experience. Due to the location of the Maffra office Wayne has been able to gain good exposure to a variety of environments and stream types ranging from the fast clean and clear streams of the Snowy Mountains to the complex lake and estuarine systems of the Gippsland lakes. Thiess Services is the major hydrographic service provider in Victoria. Wayne’s role within the Maffra office involves overseeing of the daily operations of hydrographic stations for a variety of clients in the Gippsland area to ensure they are maintained appropriately and provide accurate and fit for purpose data.

John Hayes

Bio

John Hayes is the Water Data Systems Manager for t

John commenced work in 1978 in the Hydrology Unit as an engineer and for 10 years performed a range of hydrologic and hydraulic analysis and modelling works. In 1989 he moved into the data processing/management area as the project manager for the installation of HYDSTRA on a Fujitsu mainframe computer.

John was then fortunate to have various opportunities to travel and work overseas in several countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, UK and Vietnam), performing various water data management roles. During this period he came to the realisation that in the hydrometric business we all have largely the same problems, but we are just at different stages of similar development paths. NSW and Australia are fortunate in many areas to be, at or near the leading (but hopefully not the bleeding) edge of most hydrometric activities.

After a few years in the TQM/QA area he returned to the data system/system support area where he has remained in various guises ever since. John’s areas of expertise range widely but generally have a connecting water/natural resources data and computing theme.

Presenters Day Two

Rob Argent

Bio

Robert Argent is currently managing the Climate and Water IT Services Branch within the Bureau of Meteorology. Robert’s interests and passion are in developing the systems, data and information products needed to make Australia’s climate, water and environmental data available to the Australian public through AWRIS and other information systems.

Robert has held senior positions with the Catchment Hydrology and eWater Cooperative Research Centres, and has been involved in several international water management and modelling review and steering committees. He is also on the editorial board of the Environmental Modelling and Software journal.

Robert has worked extensively in water and natural resources research, teaching, design, consulting and project management with a focus on interpretation and delivery of research outcomes, data and information into forms that met the needs of end users, particularly in environmental model development and integration.

Dr Sabine Schreiber

Bio

Sabine Schreiber manages the Regional Water Monitoring Partnership program under which approximately 80% of Victoria’s regional surface water data is collected. Sabine’s passion lies in data, the paths from data to information and in facilitating the use of information in policy and decision-making. She spent over twenty years in research and teaching, mostly at Monash University, in the areas of freshwater ecology and invasion biology. Leaving the academic sector for a short stint of four years in government research as a quantitative ecologist, she finally left research behind to apply herself to the practical application of improving water data at the ‘coal face’ of Victoria’s gauging station networks.

Sabine’s research had a strong emphasis on the quantitative aspects of testing hypotheses and describing patterns between different types of data. This led to her first contact with the hydrographic world during her PhD in the early 1990s, when she related broadscale patterns in the distribution of the New Zealand mud snail in Victoria to a range of hydrographic variables collected across the state.

Sabine’s varied background has given her a strong understanding of methodologies from the data collection and analyses end to the reporting end of the water resource assessment spectrum. Her more recent professional aim has been to improve Victoria’s surface data collection through implementing a mixture of methodological and process improvements, such as the re-structure of the service provider contracts under which hydrographic data is collected across regional Victoria to improve data quality and consistency, and linking the collection of water quality data with that of estimating water volumes and flows.

Janice Green

Bio

Janice Green works for the Bureau of Meteorology heading up the team responsible for the revision of the Bureau’s Intensity-Frequency-Duration (IFD) design rainfall estimates as part of the overall revision of Australian Rainfall and Runoff. Janice holds a Bachelor of Natural Resources and a Masters of Engineering Science and has over 25 years’ experience in hydrology, hydraulics, and water resource management incorporating a range of studies in Australia, Asia and India. She has worked in the public sector, at both state and federal levels, and also in private industry.

Janice’s main area of expertise is in the estimation of design rainfalls and floods and she has undertaken numerous flood studies and published widely on her work. Through this work she has had considerable experience with data and in particular the checking and correcting of both streamflow and rainfall data. As part of the IFD Revision Project it has been necessary to develop automated procedures in order to facilitate the quality controlling of over 20,000 daily read rainfall stations and four thousand continuous rainfall stations.

In addition to undertaking design rainfall and flood analyses, she has been influential in the development of new methods and guidelines associated with their application. She was a member of the committees responsible for revising Book VI of Australian Rainfall and Runoff; and the ANCOLD Guidelines on Selection of Acceptable Flood Capacity for Dams.

David McPhee

Bio

David has been in the water industry since 1986 in various roles with Rural and Urban water authorities. He has spent time as an Inspector dealing with licensing and compliance in both ground water and surface water. He has also been in operations, maintenance and construction, water treatment, customer service and computer operations. Since 2010 David has held the role of Regional Coordinator for the Northern Regional Water Monitoring Partnership assisting various organisations deal with their water monitoring requirements.

Eric Hatfield

Bio

For a decade Eric was a hydrometric (called ‘river gauging’ at the time) manager in the previous Department of Water Resources, and was involved in a number of new initiatives at that time. He was part of the team in the 1970s that developed a stream network design policy based on statistical assessment of the contribution of data to reducing errors of estimate of hydrologic parameters, and was involved in the upgrading of instrumentation and computer processing of records. During this time he systematically checked the accuracy of the information at a number of long- record stations, coming to the conclusion that most had significant and until then undiscovered errors.

He moved on to river and catchment management, and became a user of stream data, to help characterise streams, understand their geomorphology and environmental health, and develop meaningful flow rules for licensed extraction.

He retained his interest in hydrometry, and after he retired was asked to assist in the automatic data checking for stream data project. Now that this is finishing up, perhaps he can spend more time in a rocking chair on the porch?

Royd Cumming

Bio

Royd Cumming is a Senior Hydrographer with Thiess Services (TS) in Melbourne. Royd’s role is to audit data collected and translated by TS field parties to ensure data integrity and the application of standards to the data management process, to provide training to staff in data handling and management techniques, and reviewing hydrological processes as required to provide best practice input, particularly in data management practices.

His 40+ years’ experience includes eight years in hydrometric field operations, 10 years at a national R&D centre modifying and running rainfall/runoff models, implementing flood forecasting models and being involved in tide and wave research, 10 years in operational hydrology and water management, seven years establishing and operating a business providing hydrographic services to a range of clients, three years as a state manager for a company supplying environmental services to commercial clients, and three years in his current role.

Royd has also been responsible for the establishment, registration and enhancement of AS/NZS 9001 quality assurance systems relating to hydrographic data collection, reporting and management.

Paul Langshaw

Bio

Paul’s career in the water industry commenced in 1972 with Sydney Water. He also worked for the Bureau of Meteorology, a second period with AWT / Sydney Water and Greenspan. Since 2007 he has operated his own hydrometric consultancy, Rainman Water.

Paul’s experience includes the development and implementation of hydrographic quality systems, the development of flood warning systems for NSW river and sub-catchments, the management and optimisation of effluent discharge systems, as well as a convenor for two Australian Hydrography Conferences.

In recent years his work has focussed on the education and training of hydrographers. He implemented the NSW TAFE Certificate IV course in Hydrography, was a facilitator and industry representative on the Hydrographic Technical Reference Group that developed the Diploma in Hydrography, and as lead trainer, composed and delivered the Hydrography Skills Set (Basic) course to over 200 students Australia wide.

Paul is currently a committee member and training coordinator for the AHA.

Simon Cruickshank

Bio

Simon commenced work in hydrography in 1994 after an aborted career in the marine industry. Signing on with what was then the Department of Land and Water Conservation (now NSW Office of Water) as a hydrographic cadet, Simon was based in Forbes for seven years becoming intimately familiar with the hydrology and geomorphology of the mighty Lachlan River including placements at the DLAWC instrumentation facility and water quality laboratory. Whilst a cadet, Simon completed a Bachelor of Technology Management by correspondence through Deakin University. In 2000, with the attraction of returning to the coast, Simon and his family relocated to Darwin in the NT.

Initially employed as the Hydrographic Manager, this role has recently been extended to Manager of Water Monitoring. Simon enjoys the challenges of operating in the remote and incredibly diverse NT, where the scale of operations requires staff to wear many different hats. The almost entirely natural environment offers fantastic opportunities both within and outside of work and is a wonderful location for his passions of sailing and triathlon.

Simon is currently a committee member of the AHA.

Linton Johnston

Bio

Trained as a civil engineer, Linton Johnston’s career has been dominated by an interest in all things water. After an initial foray into the construction industry, Linton worked in research consultancy at the University of South Australia with a focus on innovative stormwater design and irrigation technologies. He later gained employment with the

Bureau of Meteorology as an engineering hydrologist where he has worked in flood prediction and warning and water information coordination roles.

Linton’s most recent work at the Bureau is in the areas of water information standards and development of the Water Regulations. Linton also helped oversee administration of the $80 million Modernisation and Extension of Hydrologic Monitoring Systems program which has brought significant benefit to the Australian hydrographic community over the past five years.

Grant Robinson

Bio

Grant Robinson is a natural resource scientist working for the NSW Office of Water in the NSW Department of Trade and Investment. His experience analysing and managing natural resources information, particularly forestry and water resource data, began in 1981. In 2008 he was appointed to a new role as Information Quality Coordinator for the state agency’s water monitoring unit.

Grant now facilitates a continuous improvement program that focuses on measurement, data gathering and management of water resource data, underpinned by ISO9001 certification. Since 2009 he has worked with the federal Bureau of Meteorology and other state agencies developing standards for water data and metrics to define their quality.

Grant has spoken at AHA Conferences in Warwick Farm (1990s), Canberra (2008) and Perth (2010). He also spoke at the Data Governance and Information Quality conferences in San Diego (2011 and 2012).

Allan Garland

Bio

Allan Garland joined Thiess Services in 2003 after completing an honours degree in Environmental Science, majoring in the field of Earth Sciences. His early career as an assistant hydrographer was spent working across much of Western Victoria operating and maintaining the surface and ground water monitoring networks for the Department of Sustainability and Environment and a number of other clients. As his career progressed Allan took on more challenging and specialised projects including monitoring town mains water systems, estuary water quality monitoring, and river health studies such as sand slug surveys.

In 2008 he transferred to the company’s Research and Development department. Allan worked on numerous challenging issues including supporting the move to IP based surface and groundwater monitoring networks, specialist short term projects such as bathymetric surveys and providing technical support to field staff. During his time in the business’ R&D department Allan played a key role in the design, development and construction of the instrumentation housings used by the business today and significantly improved the company’s site design standards. Today he manages projects in Northern Queensland, developing and installing environmental monitoring stations to support the mining industry in their environmental compliance requirements.

Natalie Noakes

Bio

After completing a Bachelor of Science (majoring in Environmental Science) at Sydney University and a short stint in the solar industry, Natalie started with Sydney Water on the Graduate Program in January 2010. She started working in Environmental Planning and Management which involved creating environmental assessments to ensure Sydney water complied with environmental legislation and that all aspects of the environment (natural, social, economic) were considered in Sydney waters in capital projects. In 2011 she moved to the Monitoring Services area where she worked in a broad range of areas including the Aquatic Ecology, Field Sampling, and Hydrometric Service groups. Not long after starting in Hydrometrics, Natalie was fortunate enough to join the team as an assistant hydrographer working on the already in progress, bathymetry survey of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River System. Here she learnt the use of underwater acoustic equipment and software to establish and monitor tidal data, measure riverbed depths, and prepare data and reports on sites, as well as on data collection and quality.

Natalie is currently enrolled in the OTEN Water Operations Diploma and this is the first AHA conference she is attending.

Poster presenters

Glenn McDermott

Bio

Glenn has over 30 years experience in the water and waste water industry, mostly in NSW, but also in Queensland, Victoria, Singapore and Malaysia. His experience is in the areas of hydraulics and hydrology, and in particular, the use of such disciplines for planning improvements to natural and man-made environmental systems using computer modelling, calibrated to rainfall and flow data.

In 1982 his co-authored paper on a new method of design flow estimation won the national engineering award for best engineering research paper that year. He has continued to be actively involved in the design, and development of capacity assessment techniques, based on real data, contributing to national design flow estimation standards in both the water and waste water industries. He has a specific interest in measurement uncertainty assessments for models, flow gauging and in situ flow gauges of all types.

His most recent projects of this type were for

• Singapore University and Delft Hydraulics institute (this paper), in establishing a stormwater flow monitoring network;
• Goulburn Murray Water, on their bulk offtakes flow measurement, and;
• NSW Office of Water, on-farm offtake flow measurement.

The work described in this paper was done while Glenn was working for Greenspan Technology (a TYCO company), and is presented with their kind permission.

Qualifications- BE, & ME in Civil Engineering from UNSW

Matt Saunders

Bio

Matt Saunders has more than 25 years of senior management and ICT project management experience and a track record managing large technology projects within Australia and internationally.

Matt started his career with a cadetship from OTC, the international arm of Telstra, studying Electronics and Communications at North Sydney Institute of Technology, now North Sydney University of Technology. He then worked in the satellite industry at the Carnarvon Tracking Telemetry and Command (TT&C) Satellite Earth Station run by OTC for Comsat in Washington, before joining Hewlett Packard in an engineering and software applications role for some years. He then established a Network Management Software company, Comsys, and ran that company for many years until it was purchased by Northern Telecom / Nortel Networks.

Matt is a member of the Institute of Radio & Electronics Engineers (IREE) and a member of the IREE Communications Society (IREE COM SOC).

Rebekah Webb

Bio

Rebekah has over 11 years experience in Hydrographics, primarily in Quality Assurance and surface water rating table creation, maintenance and distribution. She has worked on a number of projects including flow balances, the Victorian Surface Water Monitoring Network, the Sydney Catchment Authority Water Monitoring and Flood Classifications. She is qualified as a Master of Environmental Engineering from the University of Melbourne.

Discussion Panel Presenters

Ray Boyton

Bio

Ray Boyton is the Manager Water Monitoring in the New South Wales Office of Water (NOW). NOW forms part of the Department of Primary Industries, which in turn is part of the NSW Trade and Investment “Super Agency”.

Ray began work as a Hydrographic Assistant in Tumut (Southern NSW) in 1974 and spent the next 18 years in various Hydrographic positions and locations in NSW. With some reluctance, he moved into the data and systems side of hydrography in the early 90s, leaving aside field work for a desk and computer in the ‘exciting’ period of rapid development in computer networks and software applications. This period included several breaks to work on projects in Vietnam. In 2005, after several short temporary stints in a management capacity, Ray was appointed into a full time management role thereby making him unable to get his feet wet again.

Peter Heweston

Bio

Peter Heweston began his working career in 1969 working for the Prospect County Council in Parramatta as a trainee business programmer. He soon gravitated back to Canberra to the CSIRO Division of Land Research where he worked on EDTRACE, an early Fortran language software system for managing water resources information. Oh the joys of mainframes, dropped punched cards and tangled paper tapes!

A varied career in scientific and technical computing subsequently led him to that critical day in 1985 when Trevor Daniel, then with the Commonwealth Department of Housing and Construction, commissioned him to start developing a PC-based system to replace EDTRACE. That system became HYDSYS, then Hydstra, and somehow the merry-go-round has been rotating ever since. He recalls foolishly saying that once HYDSYS was running on Windows NT there would be nothing left to do! Somehow over the last 40 years he has also learned a bit about water.

Warren Jack

Bio

Warren has been involved for many years in training across a range of industries. He established the Institute of Training in 2010 to develop high quality vocational training and assessment programs. His personal experience in training covers trade courses, high risk licencing work, workplace safety and environmental (he received a United Nations World Environment Day Award in 2011) and various other training including Indigenous training, management, small business management and diplomas.

As an educator, Warren’s function is to assist and advise those wishing to participate in approved national training for courses the Institute of Training has permission to delivery. This is only undertaken if the Institute of Training has the staff qualified to provide students with the best outcomes.

Scott Walker

Bio

Scott Walker has over 30 years’ experience in the hydrographic industry. Starting out as a trainee Hydrographer at Sydney Water in 1982, by 1986 Scott had earned his Hydrography Certificate from OTEN. His 23 year hydrographic career culminated just after he was promoted to Senior Hydrographer only to be made redundant as part of the Sydney Water / Sydney Catchment Authority restructure. Scott then took up a position as the Sydney office manager for Greenspan Technology Services, a role that lasted almost five years.

Upon completion of a Bachelor of Business Degree at the University of Wollongong, Scott looked for a career change in the vocational education and training sector. To support this he also completed the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAE40110) which is necessary for all trainers and assessors in the V.E.T. sector. Currently, Scott is t