Busy Time

It’s been a busy couple of months since returning from holiday, with some interesting pieces of work:

• helping the Australian Institute for Loss and Grief to determine pricing schedules for its range of workshops and related training services;
• reviewing and editing content for SAGE Automation’s new web site;
• editing documents for a large mediation/arbitration for an Extension of Time Claim for a major international civil engineering project and
• reviewing and editing a Field Trials Report on the collection of post-harvest biomass for energy production for Syngas, an outcome of the previous submission that won Syngas $300,000 in R&D funding for this project a year ago, almost to the day.

Technology Divide

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be all right really.

(Douglas Adams, 1999)

A Win for Allwater

It’s good to play a small part in another winning project.

The ALLWATER Consortium – a Transfield Services joint venture with Degremont and Suez Environnement has secured a new 10 year alliance contract worth approximately $1.1 billion with its new customer, SA Water, to operate and maintain water and wastewater services for the City of Adelaide and the surrounding metropolitan area.

I am delighted to have made a small contribution to the winning bid by editing and rewriting parts of the extensive and complex tender documents, including those dealing with water and wastewater treatment plants, leak management and R&D. Congratulations to Les, Ben and their expert teams for their successful submission.

HGT Funding Submission Completed

Congratulations to the team at Hospitality Group Training for completing and lodging their Application to the Commonwealth Government’s Industry Skills Centre Fund. I enjoyed working with them on this submission for funds to help establish a commercial training kitchen in Adelaide’s CBD.

The proposed project is to provide a modern, eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable commercial kitchen and associated training facilities for hospitality students to complete certificate and work skills training and gain general and technical competencies to be effective Chefs, Cooks, Waiters and Bar Persons in the high demand area of Hospitality.

Thanks go to Wendy, Jodi and Janet for their energy and focus and for including me on their team for this bid.

Mega Millions

Fought my way through the milling crowds of hopeful NY punters to get a last minute ticket for a shot at the second biggest ever Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $355 million. The guy next to me was absolutely certain he was going to win the big one. Maybe he will, after all, the odds of winning the jackpot are only about one in 176 million.