August 4th meeting at Newcastle foreshore.

Chairman Keith Chilman opened the fourth Hunter sub-Branch meeting for 2008 at the Harbourview on Queens Wharf Newcastle and welcomed the near 60 attendees and this so close to the Olympics we would like to announce this is a personal best or PB!!!    

Keith announced unfortunately that our first speaker Greg Bondar could not make the meeting and sent his apologies.  He then went on to introduced the first speaker Andrew Kemeny the IQA education officer to provide a brief update on his departments latest developments.

Andrew reviewed the IQA quarry web page (www.quarry.com.au) and discussed the all of the features available and reviewed in particular the PDP, QMCS and AIQEF as well as other groups of bold letters.  One of the popular PDP workshops is “The Quarry Products” and Andrew announced that it will be coming to the Hunter soon, he briefly outlined some of the topics covered in this, and recommended all to come.

Keith thanked Andrew for his best presentation yet and another PB was declared!!!  Keith then introduced Colin Cresdee from the RTA to discuss his slant on RTA specification and quality management.  Col started with the fact that all RTA roads need to last 100 years and thus all materials placed into these need to first class.  Many issues were discussed and below are a few items:

• Review in detail all of the RTA specifications to determine the number tests required to certify stockpiles, savings can be made by reducing un-necessary testing;
• Product quality is paramount one bad load can ruin a very good contract or relationship with a client;
• Try to structure the business such that the quality supervisor reports over or around the production supervisor, so that quality is not affected by production targets.
• Sampling is vital, make sure you are NATA registered or trained for sampling.
• Preparation of good quality management plan can save money on testing and in a product dispute can assist in document and test result control.

Adam Kelly thanked Colin and he was pleased to hear the quality mantra from the RTA particularly when cost of raw material needs to be priced to match the quality.   

Keith finished by thanking all speakers again and reminded all that the next functions include:
• National Conference is being held on 8 to the 10th October in Sydney;
• Hunter next meeting is 3rd of November at Orica; and
• Christmas Function will be held on 16th November at Broadmeadow Race Track.

Greg Thomson
IQA Hunter Secretary