14th Pipeline Technology Conference in Berlin, Germany, March 18-21, 2019
by Danny Molyneux, YPP Europe Chair
Young Pipeline Professionals Europe were at PTC in Berlin to spread the good word about our growing network. Conference organizer Dennis Fandrich at EITEP graciously offered YPPE a great booth in the exhibition free of charge and invited us to present a paper in session 6.2 of the conference program ‘Retaining & Recruiting’. This clear show of support is consistent with the attitude of all industry professionals as we speak to about the importance of and requirement for our group.
PTC is of special significance to YPPE because the group was formed (by Cindy Dirkx of the Dutch Young Pipeliner group and Michelle Unger of ROSEN) just in time to participate in the 2018 event. So at this year’s conference we celebrated our 1st birthday! Cindy was very active during this year’s PTC and it was great for us to connect with her.
Our booth, though conservatively decorated compared to some of the very impressive stands at the exhibition, attracted a LOT of attention thanks to our Pigging Contest!! The brainchild of YPP vice-chair Marguerite Forde and executed by Cindy Dirkx, the challenge to see who could score the most by throwing three toy pigs really brought out the competitive nature of many of the delegates, none more so than Bec Burns of Pipelines International – trust an Aussie to be determined to be the best!
The highest overall score all week was held by yours truly right up until the very last second before we packed the game away when up stepped new YPPE member Jeff Boyle of Vintri to claim first place with a high score of 350. Jeff is pictured below receiving his prize from Marguerite. Stella Cunha of Wood claimed the bronze medal with 250 points.
PTC is one of the four main global pipeline conferences along with PPIM (Houston), IPC (Calgary) and Rio Pipeline (Rio de Janeiro). YPPE took the opportunity of the only Eastern Hemisphere event to host the second ever Young Pipeliner International (YPI) meeting! We invited representatives of all the other Young Pipeline Professionals networks around the world to come and participate in a forum where we could share learnings, experiences and best practices. This was particularly beneficial for our group still in its infancy, to have the opportunity to speak with counterparts who are already 5 or so years in to their YPP involvement and have “been there, done that, got the tshirt”. We were thrilled to welcome Bruno Amorim and Pedro Gea from YPP Brasil, Tran Mah-Paulson and Stella Cunha of YPAC (Candada) and current YPP USA chair Molly Laughlin to Europe, pictured below.
We were extremely fortunate to welcome to the YPI meeting some pipeline industry heavyweights: Phil Hopkins, Cindy Dirkx, Marion Erdelen-Peppler (EPRG Chair), Mike Kirkwood (TDW), Cliff Johnson (PRCI Chair) and not forgetting Bentley the dog.
Wednesday night was a special treat at the Classic Remise vintage car exhibition with buffet and slot car racing.
I was thrilled with the opportunity to present at this prestigious event and this is a clear demonstration of the opportunities that being part of our group can provide members access to. My session ran at the same time as 5 others so attendance was not great, but the quality of the audience made up for the small size.
All in all, the response we received was phenomenal, with CEO of Intero, VP of ROSEN, VP of TDW all asking what they can do to support us. We were mentioned in the closing remarks of the conference by Heinz Watzka and special attention was also drawn to us in the opening remarks by Dennis Fandrich, both of conference orgainzers EITEP.
HUGE thanks to: PTC/EITEP, Cindy Dirkx, Phil Hopkins, YPAC (Tran & Stella), YPP Brasil (Bruno & Pedro), YPPUSA (Molly Laughlin), Marion Erdelen-Peppler and Cliff Johnson.