The President Writes …

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The President Writes

Shortly before Christmas, it was with great shock and sadness that I learned of the passing of Bill Cox, a former ICorr President and a highly valued and respected member of Council, at the age of just 69. Bill was a true stalwart of the Institute and it was fitting to see such strong ICorr representation at his funeral, where Stuart Lyon, Brian Wyatt and Wil Deacon spoke very movingly about their memories of Bill. On a personal note, I will greatly miss Bill’s friendship and support; he was the most honest and dependable person you could ever wish to meet and his passing is a huge blow to us all.

By now you will have seen the results of our Institute rebranding initiative, which has been applied to our website, magazine, documentation, stationery and marketing material. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to provide feedback via the online survey during the summer. Your comments were taken very seriously and I hope you will agree that MD Design Studio and Square One Advertising
& Design have done a fantastic job. The outcome will be to enhance how the outside world views the Institute and to emphasise our role as a vibrant professional society promoting excellence in corrosion science
and engineering.

It was a pleasure to attend the annual London Branch Christmas Luncheon at the Royal Overseas League on 5th December. The guest speaker was former cricket commentator Henry Blofeld (or ‘Blowers’), who kept us very entertained with anecdotes from his long career covering Test cricket all over the world. Alcohol and cake seemed to feature very strongly! As usual, the Luncheon was very well attended and can only be described as a resounding success; congratulations to the London Branch organising committee for another outstanding event.

I’m delighted to say that we have signed an agreement with the Society of Operations Engineers allowing them to take over the Registration of our CEng, IEng and EngTech members with the Engineering Council. Huge thanks are due to David Harvey and Bill Hedges for their efforts in securing this seamless transition from the now defunct Society of Environmental Engineers. If you had been holding off submitting an application while this was being sorted, now is the time!

On a related note, if you hold CEng registration through ICorr (or any other professional body) and would be willing to act as an applicant assessor or professional review interviewer for new applicants, we would love to hear from you! For more information on what this entails please contact David Harvey (d.harvey@cathproconsult.co.uk).

It has also been a time of change for our Cathodic Protection training courses, which have been completely revamped to align with the requirements of the ISO 15257 standard. This is entirely due to the sterling efforts of the Cathodic Protection Governing Board (CPGB), and in particular its Chair, Jim Preston, and CP Training Scheme Manager, Brian Wyatt. Jim and Brian have recently stepped down from these roles and I would like to thank them sincerely on behalf of the Institute for the huge amount of effort they have put in over the past few years. Their legacy is that we now have a world-class training offering that will raise standards in the industry, while safeguarding the financial stability of the Institute.

Finally, I would like to extend a warm welcome to new CPGB Chair, Chris Spence, new CP Training Scheme Manager, Robin Bailey, and new Surface Treatment Governing Board Chair, Keith Wagner. It’s great to see that our conveyor belt of talent and dedication is still functioning in these busy times. Your efforts are truly appreciated!