By Lynda Myer
Being held in early September at the World Tunnel Congress (WTC) in Copenhagen; the result of leadership election was opting of Prof Arnold Dix as President of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA-AITES). In order to help the tunneling industry move forward on sustainability, he plans to catalyze initiatives in measurement tools and contracts.
Moreover, the seats of leadership roles with ITA have been filled by two key figures in the British Tunnelling Society (BTS)_Damian McGirr to the Executive Council of ITA and Divik Bandopadhyaya to the ITAym Steering Board.
As a member of the Governance Council of ITA over 2019-2022, McGirr was elected to the Executive Council (ExCo) of ITA for three years (2022-25), while he also was elected to the Committee of the British Tunnelling Society (BTS) in 2006, was Vice Chair 2010-12, Chair 2012-14 and since then has been the UK’s member nation representative to ITA, where he has also been Vice Animateur for WG20. He works with COWI.
Additionally, Jenny Yan (Past President), with Andres Marulanda, Choi Hangseok and Jamal Rostami as Vice-Presidents, are the other members of the ITA Executive Council with three-year posts, whereas the other members of the ExCo are Sindre Log, Monika Mitej-Czajewska, Andrea Pigorini, Klaus Rieker and Sanja Zlatanic. Treasurer is Gerard Seingre.
Also the determined time period of selecting Divik Bandopadhyaya as athe Steering Board of ITA’s Young Members section is two years. Currently supporting their activities, Divik Bandopadhyaya was previously Chair of the BTSYM and continues. He was key to technically enabling online broadcast of BTS meetings and contacts during the Covid lockdowns. Divik works with London Bridge Associates and is seconded to Costain Strabag JV as Northolt Tunnel West senior tunnel engineer on HS2.
Alex Nowak La Flor (Chair), Eydbjørg Petersen (Vice-Chair), Sam Huckle, Christian Rhein as well as Jasmin Amberg (Past-Chair), are the other members of the ITAym Steering Board.
