BTSYM holds 11th annual conference in London
4 April 2019Great Britain – The British Tunnelling Society Young Members (BTSYM) held its annual conference in London last month. The event, which took place for the 11th year in a row, aims to provide a platform for young engineers to share their experience and network.
Some 100 delegates were treated to four technical sessions, comprising a total of 14 presentations. The themes were: session one – improving design; session two – project briefs; session three – project details; session four – supporting our industry. The keynote was presented by Bam Nuttall’s Phil Evans and was on the use of 4D planning.
BTSYM chair Rashik Bhanderi told Tunnels and Tunnelling that he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout for the conference, “[There is not a great] amount of work currently in London. In previous years there has been a bounty of active projects, such as Crossrail, TfL London Underground station upgrades, NLE, London Power Tunnels and Cadent Gas pipe tunnels. We thought we wouldn’t get a strong turnout compared to previous years. But we were wrong. It was one of the best attended BTSYM conferences to date.”
As for a personal highlight, Bhanderi picked out Evans’s presentation, “Our keynote speaker presented how the use of 4D planning will be instrumental in the coming years and should be picked up by all major projects as a tool for both short and long term planning to highlight clashes, but create safer systems of work from the start. This is the future.”
The event ended with a comment on the importance of attracting school children towards civil engineering prior to attending university. The Institution of Civil Engineers, which hosted the conference, is looking at this as a matter of urgency. The BTSYM advised the wider tunnelling industry to take note and get involved.
