David’s website quite modestly notes that “David is highly respected and well known throughout the dams and water industry across Australia and internationally, with a track record of more than 40 years of achievement and delivery of a range of major dams and water infrastructure projects.”
David’s contribution has been much more than this; across his career he has designed dams as a consultant, taken on the responsibility for dam safety as an owner, led a dam improvement program, taken on the CEO role for one of Australia’s largest rural water authorities, established a successful consulting business and contributed to the governance and leadership to some of Australia’s major water businesses, including as a technical reviewer and as a Board Director.
He was also recognised by Engineers Australia as one of Australia’s 100 most Influential Engineers and has been awarded the River Murray Water Medal by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
Along the way, David has made a huge contribution to ANCOLD, and internationally through ICOLD. Initially as part of the ANCOLD Executive and then as ANCOLD Chair, he implemented a number of changes to modernise the organisation, better connect to our members, grow its membership and foster the development of young professionals. David was also an active member of ICOLD Committee B – Seismic aspects of Dam Design, Committee H – Dam Safety and Committee Y – Climate Change. Committee H in particular has been instrumental right across Australia in implementing a more structured approach to dam safety.
Following his term on the ANCOLD Executive David has continued to support ANCOLD through his contributions to our conferences, through his input as a judge of the best conference papers, and through his ongoing support of each succeeding ANCOLD Executive.
But more than that – along the way David’s defining capability has been to nurture and develop people around him to grow and be the best they can. This has been a contribution without equal and today, this dams industry is full of people who have been assisted in one way or another by his ability to see the best in them, and then help them achieve it.
It is ANCOLD’s honour to recognise David’s more than 40 years of leadership and contribution by awarding him Honorary Life Membership.
ANCOLD is an incorporated voluntary association of organisations and individual professionals with an interest in dams in Australia.
System maintenance will be performed on the servers that host the ANCOLD Digital Guidelines, on Saturday, December 21st @ 10:00 PM AEDT which will require the servers to reboot.
Total downtime during that event could be up to 4 hours and will commence sharply at 10 pm AEDT. During that time end users will not be able to view or access their secured content.