Welcome to the Geotechnical Engineering Podcast. A podcast focused on helping geotechnical engineers stay up to date with technical trends in the field. I'm your host Jared Green and I've practiced as a geotechnical engineer for over 17 and a half years and in addition to practicing engineering, I enjoy mentoring young engineers and first-generation college students. I've focused on helping to increase the number of pre-college students that are interested in steam, majors and fields, that being science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. In this episode of the Geotechnical Engineering Podcast, I'll be talking to Seth Perlman, PE, DGE, who's the president and CEO of Menard Group USA. Seth will be talking to us about what his company does, a little bit about ground improvement and how to advance in your career. He has over 40 years of engineering experience with the last 34 being in the Geotechnical design and building construction industry. He earned his BS and an MS in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania and Virginia. He's a member of the Geo Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE, American Concrete Institute, ACI, American Society of Highway Engineers, Design, Build, Institute of America, Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania, The Moles, and the past president of the Deep Foundations Institute, DFI. He serves on an advisory council to the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Mr. Perlman received many awards and worked on some of the most challenging ground improvement projects in the United States. He will include his full bio in the episode show notes. And with that, let's jump right into our conversation with Seth. All right, Seth, welcome to the Geotechnical Engineering podcast. We're honored to have you. How are you feeling, man? I'm feeling fine, Jared. How are you today? Doing well. Doing well. Can't complain. Can't complain. Yeah. I'm hanging in there. This has been at home for six months, but we're doing all right. I know. It's just, it's killer.  Yeah. We walk, we ride bikes, we play little golf. It's not so bad. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Well, Seth, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more about, let's say, what the daily basis looks like for you and Menard? So my job carries a few roles. I'm day to day, at least half of my time running Menard US, which is spread out around the eastern half of the country to about all the offices. And I have oversight and board level responsibility for Menard, Canada, and Cone Tech, which is based in Canada, but also operating in the US. And we have some developing international platform for Cone Tech. I have some board responsibility with Menard in France. Okay. Excellent. So that's kind of my, it spreads across, but it's clearly it's Menard. Excellent. Excellent. And we say Menard group US, who is Menard group USA? So we are specialty design, build geotechnical contractors, doing ground improvement. We have offices, if you did, if you drew yourself a backward C starting in Minneapolis, coming across Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Jersey, upstate New York, down the East Coast, and across to Houston. That's kind of where all of our local offices are based.  And it became Menard group USA because a little while back we acquired a company historically called US Wick Drain. It was in North Carolina and it changed the name to USW. At the end of the day, we operated as one group as Menard. We keep the historical USW on the books for some other reasons to have two operating companies. Excellent. Excellent. And then, you know, Menard, what's the history of Menard? Like, what's the significance of that name? So, so Menard was started by an inventor, a guy named Louis Menard. He went to one of the top engineering schools in France and came to the US in the 50s to get a masters. In 1954, he recorded an invention for what we know today as the Menard Pressure Meter. It's a one meter long tool that goes in a borehole and you expand it out and you get a mid-place modulus in the soils. That was his invention. In 57, he started a company to manufacture and distribute the tool around the world. He went around the world then trying to sell it and develop his company. And in 68, he listed an invention for what he called dynamic compaction and his thinking was that he would use this tool to prove out the work. In 69, he did his first really large dynamic compaction project. And in the early days of dynamic compaction, Menard went to places where huge fills were being put in like large marine dredge fills. They would make new airports, things like that. And they built massive machines, custom made massive machines that would drop weights 50 tons, 70 tons. These massive weights on these big tripods and big customized cranes with 50 wheels on them and huge counterweights and things like that. So they did some really crazy stuff in the beginning. It was all non-standard, but it all demonstrated and made a science out of banging on the ground. That's kind of how the company started. And then it evolved over time to where, and now today, and it's interesting because we were doing the pounding, we were doing stone columns, developing as a normal ground improvement contractor would. But in 1994, a professor in France that was working with us as was an owner of Menard patented these CMCs, control modulus columns. And today, that's our major product in the US. It's over three-fourths of the business. Around the world, it's over half the business. We've been doing them. We patented them in the US in the early 2000s and we're doing them now around the world for about 26 years. And that is a lead product as part of a suite of techniques that we use all under this definition that we call ground improvement. Okay. Well, I mean, what is ground improvement? So I have kind of an elevator answer for that. Or what you could say, the guy sitting next to you in the plane answered for that. So the guy said, well, you do, you know, I run this company called Menard. We do ground improvement. What's ground improvement? Okay. So this is the layman's answer. I'll start with that.  People understand that they've built houses or whatever they've built. Yep.  Yep. Well, there's a very large range of opportunity between good ground and ground where you need piles. And we fill that range. And there's also an increasing risk. So if the ground's super good, no problem. As the ground gets more marginal, until we had ground improvement, engineers would say, I remember in the early days reading reports where the engineer might say, you can use three-quarter tons per square foot or one ton per square foot, give them some really low bearing pressure. Yeah. Based upon maybe some old fill that have been there for 30 years or something that probably was okay for a lightweight building, but nobody wanted to take a chance otherwise, right? And now with risk management and other things, on the low end of those kinds of jobs, most engineers won't even certify an old fill without doing something to it. And on the high end, when you make the jump to piling, as the risk increases, as the ground gets worse, and you say, okay, I need to put in piling, that's a huge cost increase for the client to mitigate that risk. Yeah. There are many, many cases until you reach that maximum case where you have to use the piling, where you can substitute some kind of ground improvement technique. So what is it? So we fill this big risk slash cost void with several basic principles. You either densify it, you consolidate it, in the case of clays or things that'll squeeze water out of it, or you reinforce it. So we densify it by banging on it as we talked about, or vibrating it with multiple techniques in that genre, depending on the depth and the amount of energy you need. You can drain it with wick drains, or vacuum consolidation, or just a straight surcharge and allow it to settle out if it has the ability to drain. Or you can reinforce it with stone columns, stone piers, grout columns, CMCs, piles, that you can design a pile using ground improvement philosophies. But when you reinforce it, it means just that you're creating a composite. You're not ignoring the contribution of the soil. You're using the contribution of the soil and doing more of a soil structure interaction design, as opposed to piles, which are just saying, okay, the soil is going to keep my pile from buckling, but I'm going to put 100% of load on these piles. So that's the big difference, and that's where the line gets drawn between the two. Gotcha, gotcha. So you got this range of doing nothing all the way up to doing piles. So there's like a big range there, and this ground improvement lives in there. What are the degrees within that range of ground improvement? Well, you can spend a couple of dollars a square foot. You can spend 40. It depends on depth. It depends on the difficulty of the technique. I also failed to mention mixing. You can do soil mixing and create composite cement and soil columns. You can create walls of things. You can do, you can use it also for seismic mitigation. There's a new technique that we've been doing more recently. We call them earthquake drains. They're larger, four-inch diameter slotted pipes wrapped with a fabric sock that are put in the ground through a mandrel. And the theory is that if you put enough of these in, you have sort of a rapid drainage reservoir in an earthquake case to prevent full liquefaction.  So you don't have a flowing failure. You don't have a full liquefaction case. And we're using them in some markets. There's some debate about acceptance. Again, with all these techniques, because they're newer, it requires education, requires study, it requires acceptance. And acceptance of any new technology doesn't occur all at once.  It's a good way to put it.  It resembles piling in a sense. Is there a difference in a piling ground improvement? Yeah, there is. Well, first of all, piling is codified, right? Now, that doesn't mean to say that you can't continue to develop new techniques for piling, new types of piling, new thinking about how you design it. But it has kind of a mentality that goes with it, because it's structurally connected to the building. So when you think philosophically about a facility on piling, the total structure is the total holistic thing all the way to the bottom of the piling. Just because part of the structure is buried in the ground, that doesn't mean it's not part of the structure. So it's all one deal, right? Yep. With ground improvement, there's a decoupling philosophically, right?  And you make the ground behave like one of those mattresses. You get your pillow top, and then all your little springs, and the whole thing works well together. But the structure can still move around. You can still turn over, you can still get up, and the structure and the ground does what it does, and it responds to the structure. So you can be more creative with the concrete work. In fact, much of the savings is not necessarily in how much effort you put in the ground, but what you can do to economize on the concrete foundations, because with piling you have to be able to draw that load into these large pile caps, grade beams, some kind of structural system underneath. Whereas when you're thinking about ground improvement, you typically want to spread it out more. So just the whole system of thinking changes, and the economy has to be holistic, both when you're looking at piling schemes and ground improvement schemes. Now going back to the question, are there differences or is it the same? Much of the equipment we use to make CMCs, our primary offering, which is we think that one of the highest value offerings that we have, is piling equipment. It's piling equipment set up the way you typically set up to do very high production auger cast or auger displacement piles. So we typically use a displacement tool on the end of a very high torque drillhead with a big pull down winch on it, and we're squeezing or displacing a hole in the ground and pumping a cementitious grouter concrete as we come up, either a sanded mixer or a small area mix. So and we sometimes even reinforce them. It's got a loading involved due to movement, due to being next to the top of the slope or underneath a highway wall that has this underlying stability issue and some lateral restraint problems as a passive tie down underneath the shear wall. So they can be reinforced as well. That doesn't make them necessarily by definition piles if you're designing using this more holistic approach. So but I'm sure the piling guys might argue otherwise. That's the right to, that's okay. Got it, got it. I think the decoupling is a, I think that's a good analogy in the mattress, you know, to kind of explain the difference. Okay. So we're in an interesting time. Interesting time can mean a lot of things, but I'm talking about as we look at say government budgets, right? And government budgets are for the most part dwindling as it comes towards things such as critical infrastructure. What implications do you think there are for ground improvement? Well, you know, we talked about acceptance and how you get people, you know, you get them one customer at a time, one believer at a time, right? And there are some DOTs that have been very open towards these techniques. And we've been able to bring some really large-scale projects in for very economical costs. Meaning, I don't know, have you ever been in New Orleans? You know, I have not, but I have a lot of friends. Okay, so a classic example is when you drive through the swamps of New Orleans and they have deep, soft clays and you see all these ramps when you're getting close to the airport, these ramps coming off the highway. And some of these elevated bridges are only eight or 10 feet off the ground. And it's a lot of structures, a lot of expense, a lot of maintenance. And there are huge values in building calm, supportive embankments, which we do typically with CMC. And we of course support high embankments as well on CMC. So with highways, you can build very well-performing embankments that settle in small reasonable amounts and without putting them up on high structures. Whereas classically, you would run those structures until the abutment got maybe six or eight feet off the ground. Yeah, soft settling ground. And the other thing is, and I'll be for fear of being criticized by DOTs, DOTs are way too caught up in codes and standards and plateaus. And I firmly believe that if design build and trusted relationships are developed between responsible design builders and owners and consultants in a team without being prescriptive, you can create huge savings. So you can build more with the same amount of money. And I think instead, we tend to set bars, we tend to spend money on things that are not always the best value. And so it either kills projects, waste money, or makes the project more expensive than it needs to be just because someone has a little bit of fear. For example, if we've looked at column squirt embankments where 80% of the settlement is coming from the top 50 feet, and then there's a very dense sand layer and another lens of clay that might produce another half an inch of long-term settlement at death below the sand layer. And the cost to get below that sand layer into that last lens of clay doubles the price of the support job and it's unnecessary. So what's the price for that extra long-term half an inch of settlement on your roadway approaching the bridge? It's not worth it because you can design the transition to accommodate that very easily. And that's where that requires then people who are willing to take the leap to say, you know, I don't need my highway to have zero settlement. And I want to bring value to my customer, the DOT and the traveling public to pay for these highways. Got it. But in order to do that, you have to look at holistically. You can't just say this is the foundation bid package. This is the superstar bid package. I got you. You can't just write what has to be one inch no matter what. Design to that regardless of the cost. You know, somebody proposes you like and do it with an inch and a half and it saves you a few million dollars. You ought to talk about that, right? Yeah, that makes sense. And sometimes they do and it's very, it's district by district, state by state, engineer by engineer. As I say, you have to take them one believer at a time. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, we had a recent guest who you know very well, but he criticized ground improvement looking at it and he's a piling contractor. And he said that, you know, from a ground improvement standpoint, you don't have to follow the same rules as a piling guy. What is your response to that? What do you take to that? Sure. It's not the first time you heard somebody say that. No, no. And you know, it goes to what I just said about do you need to spend the money. I remember, you know, I worked years ago at Nicholson for a long time. I read a lot of piling specs and they would talk about 50 blows for the last inch or, you know, you're smashing the heck out of this thing. You know, so what's really, what does refusal mean? And so these pile specs, and I'm sure they've been modernized since things, they've gone to energy methods and other things. But the fact is, if people aren't willing to create continuous improvement, then the pile specs aren't going to bring value to their clients. And as I say, there are places where piling should be used. On the other hand, with ground improvement, we're constantly trying to bring the best value. The competition sits with best value. It's not who can do the prescriptive technique for the least cost per linear foot. It's who can produce the design that gives you the service that they want and serviceability that they want for the best price and time and value, quality, time, safety, everything. So it's, and we are continuing to improve the quality of our stuff. I can't speak for some of the other competitors. We have some very high-end competitors, but there may also be other people that could be leading that competitor to say, geez, ground improvement is sloppy here. It's not going to make up the rules, whatever they want. I'm sure there might be some people taking too much risk. And as with any new technology or developing technology, you may have some failures. We screwed up a few times. We've done thousands of jobs and not every one is absolutely perfect and we've repaired some jobs. But if you're going, but in terms of the overall collective value, if you don't take a little bit of risk, you're never going to be able to bring that value. And we've instrumented all kinds of sections. We've done all kinds of large-scale test programs. There's a lot of technology development behind this thing. And we feel very confident about the designs we make. And we're setting reasonable factors of safety and allowable stresses and other things in these designs that would make sense. And ultimately, our chief engineers, hopefully, will sit on some kind of code committee and help to write a code as this thing becomes more commoditized. It's just not ready to be commoditized yet. Gotcha. What do you think of, what do you think is the timeframe or something like that? Is that years away, decades away? Maybe another 10 years. I don't know. I'm not sure, but when you think about building codes, they set a minimum for people because you have to sort of regulate your industry. And I think we should look at the way we write all of our building codes because most of them have paragraphs that say something like, yes, this is what the code says, but if you can demonstrate with good engineering that it still works, you submit that to the building official and they'll consider your request. So I think that principle needs to be promoted more and taught more to the engineering kids. At any time I've ever spoken to a group of young engineers, I explained to them that codes are written by engineers that are just like what's sitting in this room. They're people who have done a little bit of master's research, PhD research, or done research in their companies. They've developed the technique. They go sit on a committee, they debate for 10 years, by the time the code passes, they're talking about 10-year-old technology and so it's just a snapshot. And if they're not working on continuing to develop that technology further and tweak it out a little bit, then it's not worth the trouble. The ACI 318 gets updated all the time, but when they're making those updates, they're representing research from 10 or 15 years prior, until it finally makes the code. And again, that's just setting a snapshot reflective of all the current research and all the people that are willing to take their efforts and put it into that document to make it a better living, breathing document. And I don't know for sure about the steel industry, hopefully they do the same thing, but I've been involved in ACI code writing with never steel. We need to understand that it's not just, it didn't come from on high on Mount Sinai and it handed over a set of tablets. Engineers wrote those for a reason and they wrote it based on their experience at that time. So doing ground improvement now is creating another set of experiences that ultimately will get written into a code and hopefully will continue to live and breathe as they get practiced. Sounds good. Sounds good. Fair point. So when we think about specialty geotechnical construction, there's so many different types, right? But let's say IRF retention. IRF retention, for the most part, aligns well with a design build approach. What about ground improvement? What's the best way for, how does this get acquired? How does it become a part of a project? Is it design build or something? Yeah, I mean, the sooner, so we like to work as part of the team with the architect, the structure engineer, the geo engineer, the owner, the contractor. The earlier we get in, typically the more value we can bring, right? So they have a concept for a building. They know what the footprint looks like. They know how it's going to be used. They know whether it's going to have shear walls or not. They know roughly how many floors. So they know what a way is per floor. They know where they want to put columns. So they've got some concept of where all the columns are going to go, where all the load bearing walls are going to go. And we don't need footings. We don't need anything else, except maybe what's happening in the shear walls. And we can budget that building and talk to them about what the footings might look like with our scheme. So in design build, we're bridging between the ground and the initial conceptualization of the concrete scheme and helping them minimize. I remember once doing a little building in Pittsburgh, the guy calls me up. He says, you know, I've got this thing designed on drilled shafts. It's putting the building over budget. Take a look. I gave him a price. I had no idea what the drilled shafts were worth. It turns out our scheme was half the cost of the drilled shafts. And it got all like the grade beams and heavy concrete out of it. And he came to me later and said, you know, had I known you could do this before, I would have saved us all kinds of detailing on the structural side, because I would have just detailed simple spread footings instead of all these grade beams. So it not only saved money on putting the foundations in and made his concrete a lot cheaper too, but he didn't get us in early enough. He still hired us. But he had to redraw the job. So he had designed the foundations twice. Who knows if the owner wanted to pay him for all that extra structural work. So it's all about just being respected as part of the team. And we have a design department of at least 12 full-time engineers just cranking numbers all day designing these jobs. So that's part of our process. We make a preliminary design before we give somebody a price. And we make a final design if we get part of the team. Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. Well, I've been running around to a lot of, it's virtual, but I've been running around to a lot of career fairs the past few weeks. For a new engineer leaving college, what opportunities are at a company like Manara? Like ours? Yeah, or even a more experienced engineer is looking for a pivot. Yeah, so as I said, we have a lot of these regional offices and we're working to get more and more local. So each person that's running each major region is always looking to say, where's my next level office going to be? So we put small to medium teams in every one of these little regional branches. And it's a very entrepreneurial environment. We have kind of three really simple philosophies within Menard. It's make it as simple as you can. Be curious, which is all about, how's this building work? Where's the load really coming from? Why do you want what you want on this thing? Be entrepreneurial. So being entrepreneurial means that we push decisions down to the lowest level where they can be made. We like to say, if you know what you know, then take the decision. If you know what you don't know, ask questions. If you don't know what you don't know, then we're going to be in big trouble. So for young engineers that come through our system, they can move up very fast because we keep a really flat management structure. And rather than creating a big pyramid where there's a limit to how you can grow, we continue to just spread. So as soon as someone's ready, it might even be as little as three to five years experience.  So okay, then go start an office in Kansas City. If we think they're ready, they can go do it. So there's, and we've started all of our branch offices, not by telling someone where to move, but by them coming to us saying, it's usually like, hey, my girlfriend's parents live in this town. I need to go there. Truly organic. And then they go start an office there. People are happy because they get the move where they want to move, not where they have to go. And, and it's a real, somebody else said to me recently, really crazy. He said, you know, the culture that we've created with challenging people asking questions, really getting them to learn fast and understand why we do things and understand why the client wants to do things. He called it infectious. You know, we spread this culture to be really excited about the things we do and to be really want to, and to really want to service the clients with the best value system. So, and where we're not the best fit for young engineers.  You know, you have to be willing to constantly be learning, challenging yourself a little bit. Got it. Got it. Well, excellent. Thank you, Seth. This is a good point to pause. We're going to pause for a moment and then we'll be right back to close out this talk with our career factor of safety in segment. Stick around. All right, welcome back. It's time for our career factor of safety in segment. When we think about geotechnical engineering, like many disciplines of engineering, it's important to incorporate a factor of safety into your design. But what about incorporating a factor of safety into your actual career? Today, we're speaking with Seth Perlman, PE, DGE.   How do you decide on what to work on each day? And when you have so much at your responsible for overseeing, how do you give yourself a factor of safety against burnout? How do you stay productive? Well, for me, what drives me is knowing that I'm helping the people that work for us be successful. So my job is to be the servant leader. My job is to be at their behest, to be available to them, to advise and encourage and help them sort of tweak their thinking, help them be creative, help them learn to be creative, help them learn to challenge what they've come up with. As one of the guys says, well, so if we get Seth on the phone, we're on the risk of flipping the table. So for me, that keeps me going. If it's just, okay, I'm reviewing the standard thing, I'm checking my list, that would be no fun. We make it fun by always challenging. And just because we did it that way last year, doesn't mean we need to do it that way this year. We're always looking to say, how do we tweak our own productivity? How do we make every year a little bit better at what we're doing? In fact, it's paid off because I don't do a lot of real work anymore. My real work is just helping others. But the people that are doing the work have become much more productive through this continual process of challenging ourselves. So it helps us stay competitive. And people I think have more fun. It's boring when you're going slow, people love to go fast. That is great. That is great. Well, Seth, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for sharing all the great insights with us and thank you for your service to the industry community. You've shared some great information and advice that I know is going to help our listeners a lot. If our listeners wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way to find you? Social media, email? I'm on LinkedIn. They can get my email, ManardUSAS, P-E-A-R-L-M-A-N at ManardUSA.com or Manard Group USA. No problem. Call the office. Ask for Lorraine. She'll track me down. Without Lorraine, I couldn't function. That's the other way I stay productive is if somebody likes Lorraine. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Okay. Thanks a lot. Take care. I hope you enjoyed the show today. We would love to hear your feedback, comments, and or questions. Please feel free to go to GeotechnicalEngineeringPodcast.com, where you'll find a summary of the key points discussed in today's episode, that being episode eight, as well as links to any of the resources, websites, or books mentioned during this episode. Until next time, we wish you the very best in all your Geotechnical Engineering endeavors. Peace.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to our 10th edition of our IWA Young Water Professional Global Coordination call. My name is Isabella Espinola, and I work in IWA as a membership engagement officer, and I am responsible for the Young Water Professional community here. And I'm happy that we're organizing this event. This is something that me, Nitya and Farouk, we have been working a lot to start the year with this event. And I hope that you enjoy, that you participate, and that you engage in this opportunity to get to know the other chapters and how we can exchange our connections between not only young water professionals, but also as youth and show the power that we have to change award and to change the water sector. So I'm not the only one doing and moderating this event today. I have the amazing company of Nity. You can open your camera and just say hello. Sure. Thanks, Isabella. Hello, everyone. I'll quickly introduce myself. I'm a YWP from India, and I'm a postdoctoral researcher working on using omic techniques and monitoring of the water quality. And I'm also the chapter coordinator in the current emerging water leaders committee, along with Farouk. And I'm very excited for the conversations expected ahead. Thank you, Nity. And we also have Farouk. Hello, everyone. And good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It's Farouk here.  And sorry for my voice. Typically, I sound better, but it's just early morning. I didn't have my coffee yet. So I'm Farouk and I'm PhD candidate at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, but soon to be doctor in one month. Okay, wait for that. And at the same time, I teach, I have a passion for teaching and I'm a professor at George Brown College. And I love IW. I'm an emerging water leader chapter coordinator. So that's how I met most of you. And also I'm the chair of IW Young Water Professional in Canada, doing amazing things for young professionals in North America. And happy to be here and moderate this great event. Thank you. Thank you, Nity, and thank you, Farouk, for your introduction and a brief presentation. And I know that we are all tired about Zoom and all this online engagement, but finger crossed that we will all be meeting person in September in Copenhagen but before that, I do have to say some rules about using Zoom. So all the questions that you have for our amazing speakers today, please send them with this chat. So just type in the chat and feel free to introduce yourself, say where are you from where you're based and which chapter you're part of. And if you're not a speaker, please, I will ask that you turn off your camera and mute yourself during the presentations. But as soon as we have the breakout rooms, you'll be able to open your camera and ask all the questions that you have for the speakers. And there is no need to share your screen, I've been doing this and this, this global coordination call is being recorded. So it will be available online after. And if you have any kind of question just send in the chat then we can go over it. As I mentioned before, I am one of the moderators with Nietzsche and Faroq. And we have an amazing team of speakers who have Emily Ryan our chair from the emerging water leaders steering committee and also part of the Australia chapter. Then we have Chelsea, also from Australia, Shotaro from Japan, Philippi from Germany, Nadja from Denmark and Amir from Canada. And we also have amazing reperkeers that will be covering the breakout rooms, providing all the information that we need to see what you're discussing, what this event is about. So we'll compile the information that they provided. And I'm sorry, I have another one coming. And, and we'll compile all the information and put this in the IWA website. Without further delays in terms of our agenda. This is what we will be doing today. I'm doing this welcome with Nietzsche and Faroq, then I'm just going to give a brief reflection about last year. And then we'll go over to the presentations of the chapters, starting with Australia, then Japan, Canada, Germany and Denmark. And as soon as we finish the presentations, we will go to the breakout rooms. We'll have like three breakout rooms, one with Australia and Germany that will be moderated by Nietzsche and Claudia will be the rapporteur. And then on the second breakout room we have Canada and Japan with Faroq and Tampa, the rapporteur, and then in the last room I will be there moderating with the Denmark chapter and our steering committee. And finally, some closing remarks and some updates and with opportunities for the chapters and the young water professionals. So, if we think about last year, we did a lot. We did a lot in terms of our young water community and how youth can be part of in the water sector here in IWA. We continue to act towards youth empowerment, but not only with the association but also across the water industry. We organize it to virtual get-togethers and I hope that some of you were able to join. We started last year with the future of Wash. And in July we had the next generation water action focus on how we can turn challenges into opportunities. And we had our first virtual immersion water leaders forum in November. It was three days events online with a lot of panels, workshops and networking opportunities. And I know that some of our speakers today, they were part of the event and they contributed not only to organize it but also to the panels and the workshop. We had a huge amount of young waters, a professional-seeking part of it. And I'm happy to say that our next forum will be in person during the Copenhagen Congress in September and that we are already planning for that. And I hope that it can count with your participation in all of that. So Nietzsche, Farouk and Emily, we are all together organizing this immersion water leader forums in person. Like we are very excited for this. And I will pass now to Nietzsche and Farouk so we can start with the chapter presentation because they are the stars of today. Thank you for all the stars, Nietzsche and Isabella. And I guess you are the moon today because I just joined the IDLB recently so welcome to the moon. Thank you everyone. So let's start. Let's see at the great initiatives all our chapters have done during this time, especially during the tough time of pandemics to get closer and get connected to each other because this is the team of our call today to learn from each other, what other chapters have done and what we can learn from them. Here copying is not a problem. Okay, we're here to copy to learn from each other. So feel free to take notes, to ask questions, to copy each other's strategies, because that's how we learn. Okay. Thank you. Okay, let's start. I'm not going to talk more. So the first presentation will be from Australia. Emily and where's Chelsea? Chelsea is there. Okay, so Laura's yours. Thank you. I'll take the lead on this one. So everyone, my name is Chelsea Hayward. I'm based in Sydney, Australia. And I'm one of the YWP representatives on our IWA Australia committee. So we have a few things going on at the moment. These are all kind of current initiatives in Australia for our YWPs. So the first one on there. And hopefully there's no confusion because I think we use similar terminology between different programs and committees and things like that. But the first one is the online emerging water leaders program, which was established by the Australian Water Association this year. This is the first year that they're running it. And there are five YWPs from Australia, and we've been grouped up with YWPs from a few of our neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia and Nepal. So the other countries that are participating are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia and Nepal. So the program aims to support the development of YWPs and foster the development of YWP networks and programs across the region. There's various activities that have been going on as part of the program. So we've had a few presentations by experienced industry professionals that cover topics such as design thinking, project management. And we've got a session on proposal writing coming up. And that is all kind of around some small group tasks that we've been given. So initially we got put into small groups with a representative from each country. And we had some discussions around comparing policy and technical challenges and discussing YWP networks in our countries and looking at any of the similarities and differences. And then that actually fed into a presentation that we did as part of a forum at the Vietnam Australia Water Week. And then now we are currently in the middle of a bit of a project and proposal development around various programs and initiatives aimed at YWPs in the region. So there's a group looking at a workplace exchange program, a group looking at a professional development program, another one looking at online networking platform. And that last group is looking at a mentoring program for YWPs in the region. So like I said, it's been good professional development opportunity. And there's also been opportunities to present in different forums and conferences. So I guess the culmination of the program is that we'll be submitting proposals for each of our group projects and then presenting at Oswater, our big Australian water conference in May. The next one that we've got on there is the Australia New Zealand combined AWA and IWA YWP conference for 2022, which is scheduled for late June with the topic of leave your mark on our water future. So that's a 2D conference. There's going to be over 30 presentations and eight interactive workshops and panel sessions all driven by YWPs from Australia and New Zealand. And there'll also be some social functions and informal networking opportunities as well. And yeah, those presentations and workshops will cover various topics ranging from advances in treatment, building resilience, future planning, digital transformation, sustainability and then some panel sessions around climate change and social value, as well as making sure that we incorporate some sessions on cultural inclusivity. So we really made sure that we had a focus on talking about our First Nations knowledge and how that feeds into the water sector in Australia and New Zealand as well. And then the final point on there is our Emerging Indigenous Water Leaders Scholarship. So this year is the second year that that scholarship has been running and we're halfway through that program. So that's a partnership between AWA, IWA Australia and Waterport, one of our utilities in Western Australia and the recipients of those scholarships kind of mentored by experienced professionals and then sponsored to attend various conferences so that they can share their knowledge and improve their networking as well. And that is it from Australia. Thank you very much Chelsea, I totally appreciate your sharing all the great initiatives from Australian chapters. Okay, please note your questions you will have time at the end of the call or after just presentation moment to ask your questions from Chelsea. Okay, great. Let's move on to the next presenter from Japan. Shatero, you there? There's Shatero. I'm going to spotlight you and the floor is yours. Okay. So hi, I'm from Japan. I'm Shatero from Japan. And I'm a member of Japan YWP chapter. But currently I'm studying University of Christ London, UK. So today I will give my presentation from IWA London head office. And this is very good office actually. I like it. First of all, I want to explain the overview of Japan YWP and 503 YWPs have registered currently as member of Japan YWP community. And especially they belong to Japanese water company, university and consulting company and so on. This year, we try to held events in person, but you know, because of COVID-19, we cannot do actually, and we had five online events. For example, we held job seminar of water industry for university students. And the right picture is a web page of our chapter. So he wants to know more about our chapter. Please visit this page. Then I want to explain about network project. This is main topic what I want to tell you today. So now we are preparing the network project with YWP Philippines. And we have already discussed this project with them two times. And also next week, we will have a meeting and we will start our project from next month's April property. So as shown in the table, first of all, the reason why we choose Philippines is Japan and Philippines are geographically close. So we have a lot of interaction. Not only the water sector, but also we collaborate each other, like making the infrastructure or something like that. And the purpose of this project is we want to build relationship between them. And we meet online one time per month duration is maybe six or three months, but we don't decide yet now. And we will invite 10 YWPs about from both countries. And we discuss mutual interest. I think this is a unique point of our project. So generally, we will invite YWP from only Philippines and Japan to focus on two countries relationships deeply. And after we finish our project with Philippines, we want to share our projects with IWA community. And also, we want to make networks with other countries. So finally, I want to say, so before starting this project with YWP Philippines, we were supported by IWA emerging water leaders community and also German YWP Philippines for today you attend. And thank you very much again. Yeah, that is all of my presentation. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Totally appreciate that great presentation. And yep, just note down your questions. I know there are no questions. We're going to go to the next presenter and we're going now where is a bill that we're going to Canada. Okay, that's exciting. Okay, so, because I'm talking a lot you don't want to hear my this voice without my coffee a lot. So the floor is for you, Emma, I was our partnership director in Canada. So, yep, she's going to talk about the initiatives we are doing to engage with international chapters. Hello everyone. This is Amber and the partnership director of the YWP Canada chapter, and I'm a process researcher at Energia. So, since the IWA Canada chapter is actually fairly new. We started in 2019 so we didn't have much of a chance really to do much here because we've got like we've the previous activities that we have this is the chapter mentorship program, which is was at the very start of the other program here. We've only had one webinar, which is international webinar with within a region chapter I guess which is the circle economy, tapping the power of wastewater. And lastly, which is was very recent I think was this month we had a collaboration with with YWP Germany on event which on their initiative which is building bridges. And we talked about the water supply challenges and both Canada and Germany was a good juxtaposition and inspired by that we we have an initiative to start a an international collaboration between all YWP chapters so and we've decided that it would be best if we have kind of and we create kind of a networking series where we meet where the Canadian chapter is meeting with another chapter. And like an almost a bi-monthly basis and we've got topics about water wastewater water use solid waste moment we've got experts in the field in Canada on this and we could do it on our gather town space that we have already. And basically, it would be just an interaction between people working in the same field, it doesn't have to be. You don't have to be talking about work is just whoever finds any common interest is more than welcome to join. And at the very end of these series we would like to have one single meeting with all the chapters altogether to get more networking and get to know each other and probably brainstorm to create new ideas for further collaborations or even have insight into each chapters and in order to improve and see ideas from here and there. We can adopt some of these ideas people maybe can be inspired by the Canadian chapter who knows, and that's pretty much it for us. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. And if I start I could say a lot too but okay I'm going to stop here. If you have any questions just again right at that. Okay, we're going to go to the next presenter today at the next country chapter Germany, our great collaborators. Germany is yours. Thanks. Yeah, my name is Philip or Phil. I'm a communications officer at YWP Germany. Yes, our role in the in the industry is this objective is similar to to the ones you have we we like to connect the YWPs within Germany with the world and vice versa and really, I guess, get in touch with incoming professionals outgoing Germans and then just why did YWP experts around the world's and I suppose we do that by organizing networking events and round tables within Germany. And collaborate with publications, I think, on how you know from dip for part of the emerging emerging leader leaders committee as recently been part of the great publication. And, yeah, just just generally represents Germany's YWPs on at international conferences similar to the World Water Congress happening this year in September in Copenhagen. And, yeah, events that we are holding online at the moment are the building bridges online series, which basically aims to connect YWP chapters from two countries and then have a bilateral dialogue, engaging over a specific topic that is relevant to both countries and what we do is we like to have a YWP speaker that gets the chance to present their research their their project, some topic that they are working on and then give them a platform and then to just to present their work really. The second series that we are doing that we've kicked off is the International Project implementation series and that's something where we get senior engineers, technicians and then people of the water industry involved at present on or that given examples of projects international projects that they've realized and that could be a development bang that could be a consultant that could be any kind of background that's relevant to the international water industry. Next, then we've launched a program or in the process of launching the program called Roll to the World Water Congress 2022. And that is basically to engage with the wider piece within Germany to assist us with a multimedia approach and reporting off of the events and just be part of the events. By having the chance to have sponsored access to the conference as well. That's that's it in a nutshell from me. And thank you for organizing and listening to me. Thank you so much Phillip that was amazing and there and I love your vision because your chapters really example for all of us because he has a really focusing on international collaboration and I can see that and all your activities. Thank you so much for like, and Isabella, do we have another one. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. I love visualization and lots of pictures great. Okay, now. Nadia, the floor is yours. Perfect. Thank you. So my name is Nadia Lund. I'm the chair of young water professional Denmark is based in Copenhagen, just less than one kilometer from where the big conference will take place in the, in September this year so hope to see all of you. And so, a brief overview of the Danish chapter we're around 400 members in our network. And we do tons of pure national activities. I won't bore you with those ones I'll focus on the international collaborations that we've been doing over the last years. And we do quite a few activities together with other chapters the building bridges events has already been mentioned by some of the other chapters as well. Then we also meet other chapters out in the, out in the world on conferences. We do workshops a couple of years ago we did a from research to practice workshop in the not be there a conference in Finland with the young work professionals from there. We've also been visiting other young water professional conferences for instance last year we did another from research to practice workshop on the in UK, a young water professional conference. And we also had participation from a board on our national each year we also have a young water professional conference in Denmark. Sometimes we invite international guests in a couple of years ago we had a visit from young water professionals in Norway, giving a common workshop on innovation in the water sector, which was very inspiring. And we also do some a common publications, mainly within the IW a scope. And so, for instance, our old chair was a co-author of this digital water, a white paper written in collaboration with other young water professionals. Then we do some mentoring sessions, I would call them with other young water professionals it's mostly chapters that are either just formed or information. So we had meetings recently with young water professionals in Ecuador. I included here a picture from a trip I went to Malaysia some years ago to talk with the young water professionals from down there on what it's like to be a young water professional, what do you gain from having a formal chapter. And I gave a keynote speaker and conference down there about what young water professionals can bring to the to the table. Then currently we're focusing a lot on the IWA conference of course that's coming to Copenhagen. And there we have a lot of initiatives that I hope you'll also enjoy when you come. So, personally, I sit in the Danish steering committee for the conference. And then we have two members on the program committee as well. Let's say Inés Breda and Dorotje Wagner, who hopefully select some nice topics and the abstracts that's also interesting for young water professionals to come and this too. Then we planned a young water professional dinner on the first day of the conference on the Monday, which will be at a venue really close by the conference location. The participation is sponsored by one of our sponsors, Ambe. So it's free to participate in their space for up to 90 young water professionals. So you better sign up before your neighbor because there's a limited amount of seats. Besides the conference, we also plan a young water professional podcast. So that's each day we'll do some recording about what the main topics of the conference was seen from a young water professional perspective. And then we submitted to the workshop proposals with other chapters, one with the South African chapter and one with the Ghana and the Philippines as far as I recall. So I really hope that they will be accepted. I heard that the abstracts that have been chosen in the workshops will get notified here in the beginning of April. So I'm very curious to see if we got in there. Then there will also be a Nordic stand in the exhibition area where the Nordic young water professionals will have their own part. And we have a collaboration with our Nordic sister and brothers about creating really nice content for that stand. So when you come to Copenhagen, please stop by the Nordic young water professional stand. And then we're also in dialogue with IDA about how to make a really cool young water professional stand as part of the IDA stand in the exhibition area. Then we also do some Danish events, but they reach out to other chapters. One of them is the next generation water action that was also mentioned in the beginning. That is an initiative driven by the Technical University of Denmark. And who has this concept that they want to gather a hundred young people at important Congresses in Copenhagen. And this is the third theme that they're running. Initially they contacted me in the Danish chapter to hear a bit more about the IDA Congress and how if they made a course related to this, how could that then interact with the young water professional network. So the idea is that there are students from five different countries that works on five real case challenges during this semester. And then now it's second time we're running it. This time we have young water professional mentors from each of the participating countries. So that's the one from Denmark. One from a South Korea, a from Mexico, and Niti is with us from India. And then we have the Kenya as well. And these young water professional, then the link for the students or whenever the students face a problem during the course. If they're working on something and want to know more about a specific water topic, they can reach out to their young water professional and then share then it work and acknowledge with them. And as a final thing that is very much still on the sketching board is that we are planning a European young water professional conference to hopefully take place in Copenhagen in 2024 as kind of a follow up on the big, the big World Water Congress so keep an eye out for that as well. Thank you very much. That was really, really comprehensive and I think all of us here in this room are looking forward to all your great initiatives in the Congress to come in person and right after this meeting I'm going to go rush to that wedding dinner link to register. Okay, thank you very much all the speakers, and now it's time for a discussion. Isabel are we taking any question in the main room or we're just heading to the breakout. Oh, we do have time to receive some messages. Yes, we have a few minutes here so we can have. We can have a couple of questions. Two or three. Wonderful. So if you have any questions simply raise your hand using the zoom function, or you can give me a smile I love smiley's okay probably this one this is my favorite one. Or you can just unmute yourself, or type into the chat. So, any question. I will stop sharing my screen so we can see who wants to go on spot. Feel free to open your camera and your mic. So, we can see. Yeah, now it's time to turn on your cameras. Everyone turn on your camera so we can see each other's beautiful faces. Emily has her hands up. Yeah, hey Emily. Oh, he's ready with a question. I love the. Nadia I love the idea from YDP Denmark of doing the podcasts during the Congress to sort of gather YDP insights as it's happening. It's something like that would work amazingly at Australian conferences or virtually any in person event. I'm just curious how does that work from like a technical standpoint do you have like a spot at the conference or does the YDP kind of go home and recorded in the quiet of their home. The plan is that we're still working on on how to do it precisely, but we localize the room at the conference venue where we'll set up some equipment. And it is the Denmark Water Association or the governing member kind of supporting getting that equipment and things through the conference. We're still working on the financial part. So in Denmark, it works like we have quite a few sponsors from the Danish water sector that gives us money each year. So we have saved a bucket for this specific event because we knew for many years it would come to Denmark. So even though nobody else wants to sponsor it, we will have internal funding in the network to. All right. Excellent. Excellent. So it's that's like a rental kind of situation. It's not like there's like latent technology sitting within the association. Okay, cool. Thank you for the answer. And any other questions. I have a question for the German chapter. I just saw it say it said something about a German water dinner or something on the on the road to a to the World Water Congress I'm just curious what that was about. Yeah, yeah, correct. I didn't didn't really go into much detail. And that slide in that regard. That will be a, I guess, a dinner that we are having with the IWA Germany so that with the senior IWA Germany chapter not not just young young water professionals and that is something that is being being organized by the National Committee where the German young water professionals will have a opportunity to just participate as well as part of their sponsorship program with with the participants and the organizations being there. Thank you very much. So we have a question in the chat. I'm going to read it quickly. It's from Claudia. So Claudia is interested in being part of the way that the Ecuador, but we would like to know how's that fully pipeline pipeline and other chapters do you have work groups, identify initiatives and look for volunteers. Yeah, those two. It's for Ecuador. Do we have a rep from Ecuador? Claudia is from the IWP Ecuador. Yes, it's another Claudia. I'm so sorry and this is such a mess. I think it's morning. Sorry, I didn't have my coffee. Do we have anyone from Ecuador here? Claudia is from Ecuador and she wants to know if how is the process with older chapters regarding how you how you include like new members. How is the process because she's receiving like questions. Oh, I'm interested in being part of the IWP Ecuador, how we can proceed after this. I see. Thanks for explaining the question.  Morning. I know, right? So Isabella, do you want to answer that somehow or do anyone else has a hint for Claudia? Well, she asked to hear from older chapters. Yes, so that's why I'm asking everyone is welcome to. I can tell a little bit about how we do in Denmark. So in Denmark we have what we call regional groups. So Denmark is not so big. So we have three regional groups, and they all have a local representative and a local kind of core group that makes local events. So whenever we get a new member, they are introduced into the network through those local activities. Thank you Nadia. Okay. Anyone else wants to add anything? Yeah, I would say the process is quite similar in Australia. So in Australia we have a chapter in each state and then IWA Australia committee is our governing member to the IWA. And so for each chapter in each state, they usually have an open meeting once a year where people who are interested in joining the committee can get involved and get a flavour for what an IWA meeting feels like. And then they can nominate themselves to the committee after that and goes from there typically. But for people who are new members to the IWA as well, Claudia, there's loads of different ways that YWPs can get involved, not even just through chapters. But you can also guide them to things like the specialist groups and other ways to engage with the IWA to make sure that there's like opportunities for them to engage at different levels of the association so they really see that value. And Claudia, and if you have any other questions regarding how you can include new members, you can always reach out to me and I'm more than eager to help during this process. I know that sometimes it's difficult to understand how we can explain the association, the benefits of it, but I'm sure that you have examples here showing that it's possible to explain and to show how to include new members. And again, I think that you can always adapt to our chapter needs and how it will function. Yes, and I just wanted to add one last thing to Claudia's point, Claudia, your question is not popular. So, because you're a newly created chapter I just read the full message. I think I skipped the first part. In Canada we did a mentorship program where we had the more established chapter coming in and talking to us and giving us the heads specifically to our chapter. We had people from Denmark and South South Africa to come and mentor us. So that that's another good approach that you can adopt and take more tips from the chapters specifically to your region. So connect with them and invite them for a coffee and I guess virtual coffee, and then you can learn more from them. So that that's another hand for you. Okay, great. Thank you very much everyone is a bullet I think from your look I understood that we don't have more time. Yes, there you go. I'm sorry to be the bad person today. You're really great you just looked at me now like okay it's done we're going to the breakout room everywhere. Any questions, take it to the breakout room okay. So I'm going to open the rooms and remember that we have like three rooms. First, I'm going to show the slides so it's easy. So Australia and Germany will be in room one Canada and Japan in room two, and Denmark and the steering committee on room three. Okay, I will open the rooms now so you can choose where you want to go. That's good so we're choosing where to go by ourselves correct. Mm hmm. Okay, so we're joining everyone just just join the room that you want, click on join just go. Excuse me. Hi, I am from India and by the way India so which room should I join. You can choose the rooms because the ones that you have with the name is just reconnected to the speakers. So you can just if you want to know more about Australia you can just go to room one. If you want to know more about Japan you go to room to show show. Thank you, any chapter you want to track with you just go to that. Okay, and I'm back. I'm here so I can see the others. Hi Claudia, hi Max. How was the discussion. Quite fruitful. Oh, that's good. At least that was my experience. Claudia was a judge about it. Oh, here we go. So I have my camera switch off. I don't know. Our company is blocking zoom just recently I think because of the Russian invasion. I'm quite scared about cyber. Oh, it is a Russian company or doesn't matter. I didn't know this. Now we're working for utility in Germany and working for Wolf Abund. And we operate around roughly 60 water wastewater treatment plants and couple of reservoirs and we just got recently hit by our satellite network that we are using actually was affected by Russian cyber. Russian cyber attacks. And so they just locked on and increase the firewalls. So not very pleasing but there's a work around by mobile phones. So it's all right. We can manage. So I think that we are all back on the breakout rooms I hope that we enjoy it that the discussions were great and then you could like engage and, and communicate with the other chapters and they hope that from this discussion, we get other projects in the future so I'm really looking forward to receive your reports and work plan for the next year including some collaboration between the chapters. Farouk and if you do you want to add something. Absolutely we did have a great discussion in our breakout room to and we did come up with great upcoming events, believe it or not so. We're going to look forward to a networking sessions. What we're going to take turns so we're going to start with Argentina and a weather with Canada so that that was one of the outcome of our discussion and also great tips for our newly created chapters we had again Argentina and they got great tips and yep that was that was it. We enjoyed the discussion. Thank you Farouk. We had a similar interaction in our breakout room. There was a lot of sharing of what is work and what is not work as well. And likewise it is very helpful especially for chapters upcoming chapters like Italy and India so it was very enlightening and learning experience from the interactions of the established chapters in our breakout room. We also managed to take a poll and register the responses of what has the collaboration led to and what are the effective means of what would be collaborations going forward which I'll share the meeting and then we can probably share with everyone. So yeah, amazing great discussion for us as well. Thank you Nici for sharing. So without delay, I think that we can go with our final remarks, our final consideration for the meeting today. And we have I have some really good updates and Emily also has some information to share. Let me share a screen again. Can you see my screen. It is showing. Yes. So, um, some upcoming opportunities for our young water professionals. We have our call for volunteers open to join the emergency water leaders forum organizing committee. So you will be working with me Farouk niche and Emily on that. And you will have to organize our forum decide about the panels how we can create this amazing for all our members. And I hope that you sign up for this so please share among your chapter members your network. We are really looking to have this a really good organizing committee to ensure that we create something that you all will enjoy during the forum. And we also launched the call for nominations for the young leadership awards. So you haven't chill six of May to apply for that. And one of the past received a word is was Jacob. He is also part of the emerging water leaders hearing committee. And I'm really looking to see who will be who will receive this award this year and the ceremony will be during the Congress. That's it's a fantastic award. Even just to be nominated for that award, the exposure that you get within the organization. And the profiling so if there is a young leader in your community, who you think deserves some credit and is involved with the international water association I would urge you to nominate them for that award. And as we are talking about some IWP events. We have to start with this one Emily or yours. Okay, so on the 20th of April we're going to be having a another YWP get together to learn a little bit more about the emerging water leaders steering committee. We actually have elections for the 2022 to 2024. Steering committee, and those are going to be opening soon. And this session on the 20th of April is to chance to learn more about what does the emerging water leaders committee do. And what you might want to include in your nomination to improve your odds of getting voted for and make it onto the committee to help represent what it appears in your region or your demographic. So we are looking forward to hopefully seeing a few more of these faces there. Exactly so we'll be launching the denominations for the for the next steering committee in the beginning of April, and they will be open until end of April, and the voting will be during May. If you want you to be part of and to be included in the dissemination process. I do recommend that you signed up for this get together I'm going to launch like officially launched this week. So this is totally I spoiler. For the for the van today. And I'm, I went to see you all engaging into this opportunity and submitting yourself to be part of the steering committee. And today we have like members from the city committee so they can also share the experience and they will be present during this event. And it's also an opportunity to talk with them. Okay, and then following this get together. We have the benelux conference next week, I will be there so if you're there just send me a message and we can meet. And this will be one of the first in person meetings that I w a stuff is going. It's going and one of the first that we are having person after the pandemic. So this is something that we are looking forward to to be part of it and to see the papers the researches and the workshops that they are planning to and following this we have the one and then water professionals in Mexico, the Congress that they were planning. And the one in Australia maybe Emily can do something doing some information some some spoilers about it. And so I know that this is happening in Sydney it's the first time it's happened in Sydney since 2016. The last Australian New Zealand YFP conference that was held in March 2020 was the last in person event that we had as well in Australia before everything locked down. But that was such a fantastic event. We were getting fantastic buzz from members who attended for months afterwards. So, stay tuned, I guess for outputs from that conference. It's, I love why do we pick conferences are such a positive and kind of inspiring session so yeah. It was like impossible for me to close this meeting without saying about the Congress in in Denmark. So, we have the super super early bird rates available so please do register for that. We also have the forum and during the same the same time. So it's not only an opportunity for you to engage with other young water professionals, but also to engage with the association community to know more about the SGS, what they are doing, the works that they are presenting in the Congress. So it is a really good opportunity for all of you to be part of it. And if you resist soon you have like discounts on that. And about discounts. We also have discounts available for young water professionals so if you have a new member in your chapter or if you want to be a member, you can sign up for membership you can use the discount. And that is special for young water professionals. Just go to our website and you can become a member following the instructions that they have there. And some other opportunities for all of you to get involved with and not only by becoming a member of the way but also going to the next, joining the young water professional group following us on Twitter. So I'll link it in sign up for the newsletter. The first one from from this year, I sent in the beginning of March the next one will be on June so you do have time to sign up for that. You also can get involved with and joining the specialist groups. Follow us on Twitter and you can be in touch with all the updates that we have. And if you have any kind of question you can just send a message to me I live in like my email here. We have our amazing emerging water leaders during committees, they are also open to reply to your questions to our adults and if you want to create a new chapter you can always reach out to me, or to Nietzsche and Farouk, and we can guide you in this process. So from my sign, this is it. And I will pass the word to Farouk and Nietzsche if they want you to add something so we can close our global coordination call. Oh, we're all good. I'm just waiting for the picture. I've been there. We're looking for my perfume. I took a lot of pictures when you're Oh my God, my eyes are closed. That's not fair. No, but this is spontaneous but I will take another round. I will take screenshots because we have like the rooms. So I wanted like, okay, I was waiting at the end. I thought probably at the end we're taking it. No, but no, we are going to take it. Okay, we're going to take it. So let me get mine here. But while we're getting ready for the picture. Yeah, we are getting ready. So open your camera. Amazing. Of course. Okay, let me get some light. Prepare the light. So are we all ready? Yep. Okay, perfect. So remember to smile. Yay, you got it. Okay, that was good. Okay, I will post on our social media so you can share and I can also share my email so you can all have your copy from that. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was wonderful just having all of you guys and I just shared my LinkedIn and the chat. So feel free to reach out if you have any question for your chapter. If you're, you know, you're forming the chapter now and I need help with your constitution or proposal or anything. Like I mentioned, myself meeting is a blow or dare to help you. So just feel free to just shoot in text and email or whatever you feel if you feel like you want to do so. It's all okay. Okay, so just looking forward to hear from you guys thank you so much again. So thank you everyone for coming today and we are here if you need it. So thank you once again, and have a nice week. And I hope that I can see you all in the next get together that we're having April. Okay, bye bye everyone. Bye bye. Thank you everyone. Bye bye.


I've been a practicing physician now for almost 20 years in the field of cardiovascular medicine, cardiac surgery. While we've had made a lot of significant advances in the field, cardiovascular disease still remains a leading cause of death in men and women in this country. It has no boundaries so to speak, so it can affect anyone at any time. We see changes, cardiovascular changes even in young adults. There's lots of things you can do to promote cardiovascular health that are not expensive, don't necessarily take a lot of time or effort and at the end of the day can be very enjoyable. I always find time to do something whether it's taking the stairs at work or you know going to the gym or walking when I get home. I find that is something that to me is very comforting and it gives me time to think about the day while I'm helping myself you know from the cardiovascular perspective. I have been conscientious about seeing my physician which I think is important because we certainly can't treat ourselves and sometimes we think we are but it's we're not doing the right thing. Lastly I am conscious about what I do, what I eat, what I drink and again it's not it's not that you have to eat fish you know every day but you need to be to think about what you are eating and drinking and putting in your body because it does definitely have a significant impact. So again I think this is not as they say rocket science. It doesn't it's not something you have to agonize about all day long. It's simple things that you can add to your life on a daily basis that are going to promote cardiovascular health and in the end it's going to improve your quality of life and your life expectancy so I certainly highly recommend it.