Welcome to the first edition of Corrosion Management for 2021 and my first column as President. I was honoured to be given this opportunity at our last AGM in November and I have big shoes to fill! First and foremost, I want to thank Gareth Hinds for his outstanding contributions as President for the last 2-years – how quickly the time goes by. Gareth oversaw many important changes to the Institute such as our new brand, which I love, implementing a digital and social media strategy, launching new and updated training courses, and the transition to our new agreement with the Society of Operational Engineers. These are the highlights. However, what has impressed me so much about Gareth is his willingness to be involved in so many day-to-day activities. He has led by example with his time, energy and enthusiasm – he epitomises the saying that if you want to get something done give it to someone who’s busy. Gareth thank you for all you have done for us.
In his last column Gareth also noted that the strength of our Institute is our people – I couldn’t agree more. So many of you give generously with your “spare” time and support. As the new President I’ve been astonished at how dedicated our members are. The list is almost endless and it is impossible to recognise everyone in these columns and so much of your work it is unpublicised. But it is recognised and I offer my sincere thanks to all of you who help make our Institute so special. Should you be that rare individual who isn’t currently involved with our Institute, but would like to be, please do reach out to me at my email address below – we always have opportunities to help us improve. On the subject of improving if you have any ideas of new things we should be doing, or could improve, please also let me know via email – but be careful – you may find I ask for your help to bring your idea to reality!
Several people have asked me what do I want to achieve as the President of ICorr? This is something I’ve been thinking about during my time as vice-president and I should start by saying my primary goal is not to mess anything up and making sure our members get the support and opportunities they want. Beyond that I have four things I’d like to focus on:
1. Governance of ICorr
We have a lot of very sensible rules and bye-laws which we follow to ensure we meet the standards required by the charities commission and the engineering council. There are many of our members who quietly work behind the scenes to ensure that this happens, and I’d specifically like to thank David Harvey for his dedicated work in this area. I have been thinking that it would be good to form a Governance committee to pull all of these activities together to support David.
2. The ICorr Training Offer
We have world leading training in many areas of corrosion and corrosion control and it’s exciting to see the potential opportunities that are emerging for these to be delivered beyond the UK through both ICorr and our training partners of Correx, IMechE and Corrodere. David Mobbs has begun to outline how all of our training courses fit together and how they help develop corrosion professionals. I want to support this activity so we can offer a holistic corrosion training programme worldwide that provides a clear pathway to becoming a fully rounded corrosion specialists.
3. Balancing ICorr’s mission to promote corrosion understanding and control with our business strategy
As I noted earlier, our training courses are very popular – even with the problems brought by Covid-19. I’ve found it quite easy to become obsessed with how many courses we run and how the income can be used to further the goals of our institute. But it’s not only about money – we have a mission to serve our industry and especially our members. So we need to strike the right balance. Thankfully the Trustees and Council are alert to this balancing act and I want to support this.
4. Growth and Support of Our Overseas Membership
Corrosion is a global issue and we are seeing increased requests for membership from outside of the UK which is fantastic. We need to identify how we can continue this growth and support our overseas members.
These are my thoughts, but I’d love to hear from you if you agree or if you think there are other things we should be focusing on – again please email me.
I look forward to hearing from you and our journey together.
Bill Hedges, Institute of Corrosion President Email: president@icorr.org
