Dr Anthea Airey, our Associate Director – Science, has been recently appointed to both the Technical Review Committee of Concrete in Australia magazine and the Concrete Institute of Australia’s biennial conference Concrete 2025 (Adelaide). We are delighted to see this national recognition of her leading-edge knowledge of Concrete.
Anthea is keen to join the reference group for the well-regarded Concrete in Australia magazine, stating : “With the progress of new concrete technologies and techniques to meet global challenges faced by the construction industry, it is an exciting time to crystallize emerging themes in industry and academia for the membership of Concrete Institute and beyond”.
For past Concrete Institute of Australia conferences Anthea has served as a technical reviewer, paper and thesis judge and session Chair. She explains : “As a reviewer, my role is to recognize excellence and provide guidance contributing a positive learning experience for participants. While often unrecognised, there is a large searchable reservoir of knowledge now in the Concrete Institute of Australia library for our members. I love getting an advanced look at the papers. One of my proudest moments was during the Q&A sessions for our virtual conference for Concrete 2021 during COVID. It shows the proper respect to have studied the participants’ papers and encourage an insightful Q&A of like minds in the virtual or face to face spaces. I always learn something from these experiences which I bring to my personal professional practice.”
Anthea has also personally contributed to the Concrete Institute of Australia body of knowledge with papers on Durability, Glass Fibre Reinforcement, Corrosion mechanisms and suitable design strategies, and Adaptive Re-use of Heritage Structures. During their Conferences she can often be seen dashing from her own presentations to Chair streams on topics such as sustainable supplementary cementitious materials, innovations, restoration and retrofit.
Her diverse experiences in concrete repair include a career highlight of remediating 1.5 km of a 100-year-old Heritage listed main water supply canal to Sydney (resulting in the paper: “A Tale of Two Water Canal Specifications’ in The Performance of Concrete: Specifiers Perspective, National Seminar Series”). Her current commissions with Airey Taylor Consulting include complex and leading-edge projects such as anchoring a floating apartment basement slab, remediation of a loaded plant room slab on the 39th floor of a skyscraper, second stage extensions of a GFRP reinforced walkway maritime structure and a mould and causation assessment of a flooded sports stadium floor.
Anthea served as The Concrete Institute’s President (WA branch) before contributing to the National Council of the Concrete Institute, enthusiastically chairing the knowledge development, international and diversity portfolios; building the attractiveness of Concrete Institute of Australia conferences in academic, commercial and international sectors.
Anthea says : “Attendance at Concrete 2011 was circa 400 delegates; while the conference in 2023 (Perth) had over 600 delegates including many interstate and international participants and a go-to trade display of national significance. It has been a pleasure to be involved in the successful growth of the Conferences and I am excited to be involved in the next chapter!”
