Winner of the 2008 Komatsu Travel Award is Gordon Laing who is well qualified and has a wide range of experience in both the mining and quarrying sectors.

He led a team of similarly-minded staff to win one national and two international Awards (Caernarfon Award) for Winstone Aggregates while Quarry Manager at Three Kings Quarry. His commitment to both environmental and safety issues have always been important components of his management style, and he was well-liked and respected by all his colleagues and staff.

Gordon and his colleague Arsini Hanna presented a paper at the IOQ Waitangi Conference in 2005, entitiled “What’s Left” covering the difficulties facing worked-out quarries along with the methodology and issues in assuring cleanfill site issues are adequately researched and administered.

Gordon joined Fulton Hogan in 2007 as Quarry Development Manager.

He has been a member of the IOQNZ for some 8 or 9 years, and has rarely missed a local Branch Meeting in that time. His contribution to the Auckland Branch as a committee member assisting us organise the successful 2001 and 2008 Conferences was invaluable and greatly appreciated. Gordon is currently Treasurer of the Auckland Branch and a member of the NZIOQ Executive Board. His carefully considered opinions at the committee and branch meetings are always well received.

Gordon has indicated that he will use the Komatsu Travel Grant to futher his career, by actively promoting the development of recycling within Fulton Hogan honing in on the following areas:
* What process is to be used?
* What recycling streams could be used – Concrete, RAP, Glass etc
* Look at what other recycling operations do, how they are set up, laid out, what equipment they use?
* Put Fulton Hogan to the forefront of recycling in NZ.
* Explore if there can be an increase in the allowance of recycled materials in a range of products? E.g. crushed concrete in concrete mixes, road bases, sub-base, RAP in Asphalt mixes, sub bases etc.
* Lobbying function via IOQ/AQA for promoting recycling to specifiers to encourage the use of recycled aggregates or aggregate based materials.