“Our World Cup win shines an international spotlight on the Gold Coast and shows the world what we can do,” – Allan Herse PCA Ground Engineering.
GIFTED Gold Coast trio Allan Herse, Robert Bollman and Troy Watkins have achieved what no other Australian company has achieved before, in the global engineering community.
The local boys, who co-own Gold Coast based company PCA Ground Engineering, blew the socks off their competition, winning first place at the 2017 ISM (International Society for Micropiles) World Cup in Vancouver, earlier this year.
This is the first time an Australian company has ever won the prestigious title.
Competing against engineering organisations from Europe, South America and North America, the boys had to present a micropile project they had implemented here in Australia to 150 international delegates. The most innovative project was decided by way of secret ballot.
Simply understood micropiles can be installed with relatively small drilling equipment, in those areas of limited access or restricted headroom and with minimal impact to existing surrounding structures.
Mr Allan Hersesaid their US colleagues described PCA as having ‘the tiger by the tail’ with the technology they developed in their Australian project.
“We developed a system in conjunction with Powerlink Queensland where we can repair the foundations of existing electricity transmission towers while they are still live, “ he said.
“A few years ago, the only option was to replace old transmission towers, which led to all of the media attention surrounding the “gold plating” of the electrical network.
“There is now another option which saves millions of dollars for the public by extending the life of the existing transmission towers and our innovation was seen as revolutionary with application around the world.
“Not bad for a local Gold Coast based company,” he said.
Robert Bollman said as a business that started in 2009 and practically introduced modern micropile technology to Australia, it is a real feather in our cap to have won the best micropile project in the world.
“And we’re just getting started.” he said.
The next World Cup will be held here on the Gold Coast in 2018, which will be the first time the ISM will hold their workshop in Australia.
“This is a huge win for the Australian ground engineering industry, as it will bring the best minds in micropile design and construction to Australia, ”Robert Bollman said.
The competition will also bring between 150 and 200 delegates plus their families to the Gold Coast, which will be a good for the local economy as the majority of these people will add on a holiday due to their travel distance etc.
PCA’s construction teams from Queensland and NSW travel around the country building state of the art ground engineering projects, which are designed by their local in-house engineering team. Starting in 2009, PCA is in its 8th year and continuing to grow.
