This current edition of Corrosion Management covers the holiday period when little activity goes on at the Branches or even with the various Committees.
There has however, been considerable activity at Corrosion House with the new reorganised administration team of Gill Inwood, Cerri Sweet and Heather Rutter getting out the annual subscription renewals and finalising the end of financial year accounts by 30th June. The initial draft results, which were presented by our Hon Treasurer Dr Tony Collins at the July Trustees Meeting and are currently being audited by Baker Tilly, show a significant improvement over the previous recent years with the major investments the Institute has undertaken in that there will be a surplus, all be it a small one, for the end of the financial year rather than a loss. Clearly, this improvement will be welcomed by all of the membership and the decisions and actions implemented by the Trustees and Council have proved to be successful.
The 2004 AGM will be held at the Naval Club in London on Thursday, 11th November 2004 at 5pm and the next issue of Corrosion Management will include the full notice of the AGM and a detailed report on the financial accounts. All members are asked to put this date in their diaries now so that we have good attendance – the meeting coincides with a regular London Branch meeting on weld corrosion prevention with the Joining and Welding Society
Although there has been little Branch activity of a public nature through the past two months, the Committees are beavering away behind the scenes organising their autumn programmes and as soon as these are finalised the details will be included in our website, which Christopher O’Shea is constantly updating and his excellent work has been recognised by the significant increase in visits by interested parties.
Two of my consultancy projects, the Forth Rail Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge, which as members will be aware are located close to the BP Grangemouth refinery, enabled me to combine a work visit with the Scottish Branch AGM, which was held on 13th July. At that meeting, the Scottish Branch Chairman, George Wheatman, notified the Committee that he was undertaking a two year contract in Uzbekistan but by popular request he was asked to stay on for a further year to fit in Committee meetings and Branch activities on his generous UK overseas rotation cycle.
Colin Reid who has undertaken such a successful active role as Secretary, will continue to keep the Branch activities moving along in George’s overseas absence.
The evening was sponsored by Zinga Coatings and a presentation was made to the Branch members and guests on that evening meeting, where a number of successful applications of the Zinga Coating was shown.
The steady increase in Sustaining members has been given recent impetus with the high profile of the website and the coverage and circulation of Corrosion Management and I am pleased to be able to say that W & J Leighs Paints Ltd have rejoined as Gold Sustaining members. I was delighted to be invited to the Leighs Paints works in Bolton and to meet with Dick Frost, Managing Director, Paul Clayton, Business Development Director and Gordon Bell, Technical Director. Our picture shows the W & J Leighs management team with the overall boss, Carol Manning who keeps the management team on their toes!
It was interesting to see that W & J Leighs have been awarded the major contract for repainting the Forth Rail Bridge in addition to a number of other major projects and it was nice to have them rejoin, particularly since Dick Frost handed me a cheque for Gold Membership during my visit!
We are always delighted to have visits from Sustaining Member Company representatives as well as Individual Members and we were pleased when Jim Glynn of Intersources Europe Ltd paid us a visit last week at Corrosion House to meet the staff and to talk about his company’s development and expansion.