PERMEABLE PAVING SOFTWARE SEMINARS SET FOR NOVEMBER :
Article Date: 14 August 2008
 November will see the Concrete Manufacturers Association (CMA) staging four seminars on PERMPAVE, a software package aimed at assisting civil engineers and landscape architects in the design of permeable interlocking concrete paving (PICP) systems.
The seminars are perfectly timed as they coincide with a period in which the technology begins to take root here, as well as the South African launch of PERMPAVE. They are scheduled to run in the following centres: Midrand on November 4th; Cape Town on November 6th; Port Elizabeth on November 10th; and Durban on November 12th. There will be a charge for the seminars which will include a copy of the PERMPAVE software.
They will be run by the Australian designers of PERMPAVE, Dr Brian Shackel and Professor Simon Beecham.
Based in Sydney, Australia, Dr Shackel has worked on many projects worldwide as a consultant for asphalt, block paving and rigid concrete pavements. He is a recognised authority on concrete block paving (CBP) and is the author of numerous research papers and three books on this topic. He is also the author of the well know LOCKPAVE software package for the design and specification of CBP, and his work in this sphere won him an Award for Excellence from the Concrete Institute of Australia.
He is especially recognised for his work on heavy duty pavements including those for ports, container handling facilities and airports. He is also an expert on ecological and permeable pavements and has been involved in environmental research in the pavement arena.
He has taught pavement engineering at the University of New South Wales at both the undergraduate and post-graduate level for more than 35 years. He is well known to international audiences, having travelled and lectured extensively in 24 countries including the USA, Canada and European countries. Dr Shackel has published more than 100 research papers dealing with geomechanics and pavement engineering and his work as paving coordinator for the Sydney Olympics won him a further award from the CIA in 2001.
Professor Beecham is currently Professor of Sustainable Water Resources Engineering in the School of Natural and Built Environments (NBE) at the University of South Australia. He is also Head of Civil Engineering and Director of the SA Water Centre for Water Management and Reuse (CWMR).
Over the last 20 years Professor Beecham has made significant contributions to the understanding of urban drainage hydraulics and more recently total water cycle management and water sensitive urban design (WSUD). Since 1998, he has been Australia’s representative on the International Water Association’s International Group on Urban Rainfall. During 2005, he was a visiting professor at Imperial College London where he worked on the impact of climate change on water sensitive urban design.
Commenting on PERMPAVE, Dr Shackel advises that it is suitable for the complete novice as well as a paving design expert.
“PERMPAVE can be tailored to various paving products and locations and this provides considerable design scope. Programmed with South African rainfall data, it will allow the further downloading of local climate and rainfall information and will facilitate the selection of paving blocks best suited to a particular application. It will also allow one to specify one’s water requirement and then to design for specified volumes of water, either for storage and reuse or for replenishing underground water tables,” advises Shackel.
The filtering out of pollutants is another important benefit, however Shackel says the prime driving force behind the technology is the prevention of flooding and the new software addresses this and other issues.
CMA director, John Cairns, says that PERMPAVE will be released together with the conventional paving software package, LOCKPAVE.
“Both will be released locally on a single disc during the first two weeks of November. Releasing both on a single disc will enable users to create conventional paving designs by simply switching from PERMPAVE into LOCKPAVE.”
During the seminars, Dr Shackel will focus on the structural side of the software while Professor Beecham will talk about its hydraulic elements. Interested parties should contact Pam at the CMA on 011 805 6742 or on main.cma@gmail.com .
A close up view of the laid permeable paving stones at a new car park recently completed at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Dr Brian Shackel
Prof. Simon Beecham
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