André Assis of Brazil is elected president of the International Tunnelling Association (ITA) for the next three years.
Meeting in Milan, Italy, in June, the General Assembly also elected vice-presidents Harvey Parker of the US and K Sorbraten of Norway, while onto the executive committee to serve until 2004 come past vice presidents Jean-Paul Godard from France and J Hess of the Czech Republic, along with A Nordmark of Sweden, J M Kelvey of South Africa, K Ono of Japan and Zhao Jian of Singapore. Secretary general Claude Berenguier will continue in his post until 2005.
Agreeing a Swiss proposal, the ITA headquarters is moving to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. A permanent secretariat and full-time secretary general will, according to outgoing president Alfred Haack, make the association stronger and fitter for the coming years. Also agreed was a proposal for an independent financial audit by professional accountants for the first time.
Under Haack’s presidency, the ITA has increased in size to 50 member nations, and that could grow to around 75 in time, Haack claims.
In his outgoing report, Haack highlighted the work done to improve the credibility of tunnelling and the use of the underground by the public. In the light of recent tunnel disasters, fire prevention and fighting, and public safety, were the main emphases. The initiative included an international workshop on fire and life safety in traffic tunnels in March of last year.
Haack also pointed out that the scope of the ITA has been extended beyond engineering to aspects such as social matters, environment, quality, safety, financing and subsurface city architecture.
Following the ITA business meetings, the World Tunnel Congress attracted nearly 1000 delegates despite earlier concerns that attendance would be low. The open session on ‘Risk assessment for project financing’ was attended by more than 300 people.
At the meeting Singapore’s national group for tunnelling gave out an invitation for the 2004 annual meeting to be held in May.
