Dear ATS members and friends,

As the year draws to a close, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you all, members, committee volunteers and sponsors, for your continuing support, as with your support comes the diverse and dynamic community that we are within the ATS.

I’d also like to acknowledge and thank Harry Asche, our outgoing President, for all his hard work over the past four years. Harry did a fantastic job in steering the society through some challenging years when, due to Covid-19, in-person contact was limited. In taking on the role of President it is my task to continue his good work.

2023 has been another busy year and I hope you have all achieved what you set out to do and are looking forward to a bit of downtime with friends and family over the summer break. Looking back on the year, the ATS has achieved much. We are very much back to the in-person technical event format that was our standard operating approach prior to Covid-19 coming along and messing things up. Each of the State chapters has been able to hold a great range of events, including the Celebrating Diversity in Tunnelling event held in Sydney in March; Tunnelling Risk Management on the Forrestfield Airport Link Project held in Perth in May; Geomechanics of pressure tunnels and shafts, held in Melbourne in August; and Tunnel Systems: Planning Assets today and for the future, held in Brisbane in September. We also had various site visits including the Westgate Tunnel Project in April and the ATS Young Members visit to the Brisbane Metro project in November.

Our highlight for the year must be the Australasian Tunnelling Conference (ATC2023) held in Auckland in November, where the ATS and NZTS came together for another fantastic three-day conference, plus shotcrete course and site visits. The event proved that as industry we benefit from in-person events where networking, knowledge gaining and idea sharing is so important.

The tunnelling year rounded out with several social gatherings celebrating the Feast of St Barbara, being the Patron Saint of Tunnellers. The events in early December were a great success and gave the community in several locations the chance to reacquaint and look back on the successes of the year, and forward to future endeavors.

St Barbara’s Day nicely coincided with the biggest tunnelling story of the year, being the safe rescue, only a few days prior, of all 41 trapped tunnellers in the Silkyara Tunnel in Uttarkashi (India). This was a momentous event that bought together the global tunnelling industry in united support, and where two of our own ATS members, Arnold Dix and Chris Cooper were instrumental in developing and executing the rescue plan, so hats off to you two exemplars of what the tunnelling industry is centred upon, looking out for one another.

On that happy note, I hope that you have a wonderful break over the festive season, stay safe and I wish you and your families a very Happy New Year.

Kind regards,

Richard Buckingham

Harry Asche officially passing the ATS Leadership baton to Richard Buckingham at ATC2023.