Personnel
Dave Humphreys
Senior EOD Technician and Project Manager Defence Marrangaroo Site Remediations
Member Institute of Explosive Engineers
Mr. Humphreys served fifteen years with the Royal Navy carrying out EOD duties at home and abroad, including six years in the Sultanate of Oman teaching surface and sub-surface demolitions and defence of harbour and ships from underwater attack. He also served a total of five years in which he conducted numerous short projects with the RN gaining extensive experience and understanding of EOD methods applied to air dropped weapons, land Service Ammunition and Naval service munitions.
With the Royal Navy, Dave conducted, supervised and instructed all RN diving operations and all aspects of naval surface and sub-surface demolitions. Duties included disposal of Explosive Ordnance as required.
As UK No.1 Operator, he gained considerable experience in conventional munitions disposal. Duties took his team around Scotland disposing of diverse items from WW2 mines to modern pyrotechnics.
Since joining Milsearch, Dave has brought his extensive skills to bear in a number of projects. In Lao Peoples Democratic Republic he was responsible for the deployment of up to 180 EOD staff in 7 teams using F1A2, F1A4, F3 Detectors and Foerster 4.032 bomb locators. Duties included liaison with local community and safe disposal of all items found.
In WA he was involved in the Assistant Project Manager role working on a clearance task within the WW2 Warnbro Artillery Range in Rockingham. This was followed by field management positions on tasks at Beecroft Weapons Range, Ingleburn Barracks and clearing of abandoned detonators on the Kiama Bypass, NSW.
In NSW, he was the Project Manager EOD Technician for remediations of the former Moorebank Ammunition Depot a project lasting over a year and entailing the screening of large quantities of munitions contaminated soil excavated from large-scale burial pits. Later on the Holsworthy Firing Range, he managed the remediation of approximately 3 hectares of contaminated land after illegal dumps of UXO, asbestos and lead were discovered.
He is currently the field Project Manager at Milsearch’s complex Defence Marrangaroo site remediations project. Running in several phases over more than 2 years, this Project has included the excavation of some 43 burial pits containing a wide variety of WW2 era air dropped munitions and Old Chemical Weapons potentially containing phosgene gas and mustard agent. A particular feature of this project was the close liaison required with Local Emergency Services, higher echelons of the Defence Department, the Defence Science & Technology Organization (DSTO) the Army’s specialist Incident Response Regiment (IRR) and the UN sponsored Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
