Born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, Bob has been based in Melbourne’s western suburbs all his life. Bob has three children, Dale (who works for Woodside Energy in oil and gas), Steven and Robert Jnr.

Bob’s journey into the pipeline industry began with his studies at Footscray Tech and later at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) where he studied Metallurgy while working at Defence Standards Laboratories.

Bob was a keen player of both Aussie rules football and cricket, and is now a life member of the Youlden / Parkville Cricket Club. Bob is also a proud supporter of the Western Bulldogs, having known (and played with as a youth) many of Footscray’s 1954 Premiership team. Bob also enjoys getting away to his property in Port Franklin on Victoria’s Gippsland eastern coast.

Bob’s first career start was with Defence Standards Laboratories in Maribyrnong where he worked for ten years. In 1956, the first commercial NDT companies came to life in Australia, with Metlabs and ETRS setting up Australian facilities. Prior to this, Defence Labs had performed NDT work for pipelines and gas plants.

In 1956 Bob left Defence Standards, moving to X-Ray Engineering Company as Victorian Manager where he worked on the McKay Creek Pipeline, which saw Bob experience a few near misses due to occupational hazards such as crowbars tumbling down through the pipe.

Bob made the move to ETRS in 1960, where he headed up the NDT group, which had a broader focus than just pipelines. In 1968 when the Dutson to Dandenong pipeline was built for the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria, ETRS did all x-ray work for that project. Bob’s career with ETRS spanned 40 years, from NDT Manager to Marketing and Sales Manager to Deputy MD – an amazing achievement. Since then Bob has worked for several clients as a consultant, using his unparalleled experience in his field.

Throughout his career Bob has worked on number of iconic pipeline projects in Australia including the Lurgi Gas Project at Morwell, the Moomba-Sydney pipeline, the Esso ethane pipeline, several of the Bass Strait offshore pipelines with Ingrams, the Brooklyn to Corio pipeline, the Bougainville PNG project and various jobs in Bass Strait and onshore including platform construction for Esso at Barry Beach Victoria.

Perhaps most fortunately for members of the Australian Pipeline Industry Association, Bob is a well known and active member of APIA with his involvement spanning his career.

The first conference Bob attended was the inaugural APIA (then APLCA – Australian Pipeline Contractors Association) conference in 1969. Back then, the conference was only a one day event, which Bob describes as more like a seminar with the attendees mostly contractors. The 1972 conference provided an interesting sideshow for delegates, with ETRS and BIX racing x-ray crawlers up the corridors of the convention venue (these two companies formed a joint venture and carried out all the x-ray testing on the Moomba - Sydney pipeline).

However, Bob rates the 1991 Convention in Alice Springs as the best ever, due to the isolated location, delegates weren’t racing off to other commitments during the Convention and there were no mobile phones to tie people back to the office.

Another notable Convention was in 1980 when delegates travelled by bus from Melbourne and Sydney to Perth due to the refuelers strike. Bob’s bus left Gas & Fuel at about 5 pm on Friday and was in Perth by 3 pm Sunday. There were few stops along the trip, aside from refuelling stops, although the bus did pull over in Melton to pick up some travelling beverages and in Horsham, where they stopped for hamburgers and Keith Fitzgerald got out to lend a hand at the burger stand.

Bob was elected to the APIA Committee in 1984 and was immediately drafted to the Convention Committee. Bob’s experience eventually saw him become the chair of the Convention Committee in 1990, and he was honoured as a Life Member of APIA in October 1998.

Some of Bob’s highlights from his years in the industry include having the first x-ray crawler brought out to Australia produced by Danish company Andrex. For Bob, it was exciting time, visiting Andrex in Denmark and involvement bringing Andrex staff and crawlers to Australia.

One of the biggest challenges Bob faced came on the Duston to Dandenong project, when inverted cracking was found and the problem compounded by the overseas pipe manufacturer refusing to believe it. ETRS had to x-ray longitudinal seams, picking up defects - even then the manufacturer refused to acknowledge the issue - which necessitated more x-rays for the full length of the pipes and at last the manufacturer acknowledged there was a problem. The saga concluded with the head of the manufacturer berating his staff working on the project and thanking Bob and his team, stating it was an achievement for the ETRS team to be able to pick up the inverted cracking in the field.

Looking at the way the industry has developed over the years, Bob says it has changed for the better, and within Australia APIA should receive large thanks for this. Bob is a firm believer in the idea that people working in the pipeline industry need to have the experience of field work. His belief, backed by many in the industry is that working eight weeks in the field on a pipeline will completely change their perspective on the job.