Welcome to this month’s magazine. We’ve had some wonderful sunshine and that has accompanied a surge in ICorr activity – so I’ll jump straight to it.
In the area of training, I’m extremely grateful to Freyssinet in Telford who continue to allow us to use their facilities for our cathodic protection courses which are in high demand. On the 1st April our conversion course in Portuguese for the Brazilian Corrosion Societies (ABRACO) level 1 coating inspectors to obtain ICorr Level 2 went live, and has already attracted several applicants. We are currently working with ABRACO to translate some of our Industrial Coating Applicator Scheme (ICATS) courses into Portuguese. We are also in discussions with providers for new Refinery Corrosion and Boiler Failure courses.
On the 27th April our annual Corrosion Engineering Division (CED) meeting was held at the National Railway Museum in York with 30 attendees. The meeting was very successful, and it was clear to me that all those present were very pleased to be able to meet in person and resume networking. I had the privilege of awarding our prestigious Paul McIntyre award to Chris Lynch – a very deserving winner from a pool of outstanding applicants.
Congratulations also to Gareth Hinds, our current Past President, who has been elected as the President of the World Corrosion Organisation. I know we’ll here more about this from Gareth in future issues, but he got off to an immediate start in organsing several events for World Corrosion Day on the 24th April. I was honored to be invited to give a virtual talk on the day to the Qatar corrosion community.
On the 16th May I visited the offices of our training delivery partner Corrodere in Farnham, Surrey. Corrodere do a fantastic job of providing our courses in an on-line format, and we discussed how we might expand our current training offer.
It’s been wonderful to see the re-start of activities of our North East Branch who have formed a leadership committee and have several events in planning. A thank you to all involved but especially to David Mobbs for driving this and Lee Wilson for taking on the role of chair.
Finally, and with some sadness I want to let you know that Denise Aldous, our Office Manager, will retire from ICorr at the end of June. Denise has been with ICorr since 2008 and has quietly and enthusiastically built an office that efficiently runs all of our administrative processes. Denise has made an outstanding contribution to ICorr that is impossible to document. Please join me in wishing Denise a long, healthy and fun retirement. At our last Council meeting we presented Denise with a plaque in appreciation of her outstanding service together with a more personal gift.
Have a wonderful summer. Until next time,
Bill Hedges, Institute of Corrosion President
Email: president@icorr.org
Institute of Corrosion President,
Bill Hedges.
