2008 NAT Conference  

The North American Tunneling Conference (NAT), held in San Francisco, CA in June, attracted 718 underground space professionals from around the world.  The accompanying exhibit attracted 79 vendors, who displayed the latest in tunneling and underground space equipment and services.

The attendees spent the three days of technical sessions listening to international authors discuss the state of the industry, new technologies that have become available and updates on major tunneling projects throughout the world.  The papers are published in the North American Tunneling 2008 Proceedings.

In addition to the technical sessions and the exhibit, the NAT featured three short courses — “DRB Process Update Workshop,” “Soft Ground Tunneling Technologies” and “Underground Blasting Technology and Risk Management.”  And the post-meeting field trip to the Devils Slide tunneling project near San Francisco was sold out.

Introduced at the NAT was Recommended Contract Practices for Underground Construction.  Commissioned by the Underground Construction Association of SME, this book is the first industry-wide effort to improve contract procedures in more than 30 years.   It and the NAT proceedings volume are available from SME, e-mail cs@smenet.org, Web site www.smenet.org/store.

Complete coverage of the NAT conference will be published in the September issue of Tunneling & Underground Construction magazine.

For his Dedicated Service as NAT Conference Chair 2008, Gregory L. Raines.	For his Dedicated Service as NAT Conference Vice Chair 2008, Mark W. Ramsey.
William W. Edgerton for his book Recommended Contract Practices for Underground Construction.	For his Dedicated Service as an Executive Member 2007-2008, Nick Chen.
Fengshou Zhang the winner of the 2008 NAT Student Competition.	Shuying Wang the runner up for the 2008 NAT Student Competition.