Paul Nordengen was elected President of the International Forum for Road Transport Technology (IFRTT) at a meeting held in mid-March in Melbourne, Australia. This is the first time someone from the African continent will serve in this position; previous presidents hailed from North America, Europe and Australia.

Paul's term will start in July 2010. He has been Vice-President: Developing Countries of the forum for a few years. The IFRTT was established in 1986 after the conclusion of the first heavy vehicle weights and dimensions symposium, held by the Roads and Transport Association of Canada. The general assembly of the forum is held during the symposium, with this year marking the 11th symposium.

During the opening plenary session, Paul spoke on freight issues in developing countries, followed by a presentation later the same day on monitoring results of two demonstration vehicles in the forestry industry in South Africa.

"The dinner where the announcement of the new president of IFRTT was made, was quite an occasion, with 120 of us sitting at one long table in the Queen¿s Hall, State Library of Victoria," says Paul.

Locally, Paul was President of the South African Road Federation for the past two years. At CSIR Built Environment, his involvement spans performance-based standards for heavy vehicles, bridge management systems, heavy vehicle overload control, weighbridge systems, abnormal loads and self regulation in heavy vehicle transport.

"There is no doubt that the transport of freight is a critical cog in the country¿s economy. But there are some major problems out on the road. South Africa has an inordinately high rate of fatalities involving heavy vehicles ¿ approximately 13 fatalities per 100 million truck kilometres travelled. This compares with between two and four fatalities for many developed countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and New Zealand," comments Paul.

"The numerous causes of truck crashes include poor vehicle maintenance, overloading and the well being of the driver - whether related to fatigue, poor health, inadequate training and/or lack of driving experience. The behaviour of other motorists on the road can also contribute to accidents involving trucks," he notes.

Paul has been a member of a joint OECD/ITF Transport Research Centre working group that investigated the safety and environmental and productivity performance of heavy vehicles. The final report, `Moving Freight with Better Trucks¿, which includes the benchmarking of 39 `workhorse¿ vehicles representing 10 OECD member countries, is expected to be published by the OECD in the near future.

Paul was part of an international team that developed an overload control strategy for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport in Senegal. He acted as project leader on a number of projects, including the development of an overload control strategy for the North West Provincial Government, a traffic management strategy for the Free State Provincial Government, and an overload control strategy for Gauteng. He also led a World Bank-funded project for the Ministry of Works in Malawi to determine the effect of increasing the permissible axle loads.