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DIARY DATES
29th September 2010
Visit to Wedge Group Galvanizing Plant Book Now
2nd December 2010
Annual London Branch Luncheon Book Now
27th November 2011
Fray International Symposium More Info
THE HISTORY OF OUR INSTITUTE
Those of you who have any interest in reading about the historical roots of our Institute will recall that a year ago, at the beginning of 2009 (issue number 87), I started our 50th year by looking at the earliest roots from 1958 – 1966 and beyond.
In that same issue I set out the six sections that I was going to cover, in the six issues of 2009/2010 the ongoing history of our Institute and the developments over the 50 years, but regret that I have failed!
In issue number 88, March/April, I covered the second part of the history from BACE to ICorrTech to ICorrST, over the period from 1967 to 1978. I included a copy of the oil painting held in the Leighton Buzzard office, of Dr U R Evans, so that the many people over the 50 years who have received a U R Evans Award would be able to see the image of the gentleman who set this all up so very many years ago.
In that same issue number 88, full details of the celebration of our 50 years, which controversially was held at the Thames Barrier, but turned out to be a great success and I am grateful for all of the kind comments that we received at the Leighton Buzzard office, from those members who were able to attend. Regrettably and surprisingly we had to cut off the numbers of members and guests at 125 and I am sorry that some of you were disappointed.
In that same issue I reproduced the third section of our history which covered the period from 1979 to 1989, with all of the internal disputes between some members and the subsequent setting up of the Corrosion Control Engineering Joint Venture (CCEJV), with NACE. The change to the Corrosion Engineering Association, (CEA) and the way in which the Institute developed and thrived during that period, working with like minded, “corrosionists” from all over the world, was a great success.
After that third section, I had just spent the first part of the summer helping to organise the 50th Anniversary event and immediately then got into the organising, in conjunction with our contractors, Hill Media, the re-launch of Correx 2009, in conjunction with Surface World at the NEC Birmingham Exhibition Centre. Regrettably, this took a considerable amount of my volunteer time and so my continued submissions to Corrosion Management of our history tended to take a back seat, as I was constantly reminded that I had to work to earn my living and not do excessive, unpaid voluntary work for our Institute!
With those lengthy apologies out of the way I am now getting back to the final sections of our history, covering the period from 1990 to 2009. I promised to cover briefly the links across the decades, with our magazines, our offices and our conference and exhibition events.
Our offices initially started in 1959 in the London area where we had three different offices at that time, initially in old Brompton Road, we started at the offices of the publishers of Corrosion Prevention and Control, whose initiative in launching, “BACE” was started with their magazine inserted as the Corrosion Engineer. Within two years it was decided by the then, Council of BACE, that a move away from the publishers offices should be made and this was then temporarily located in Ovington Place, the offices of Jack Cardy of Allweather Evode Paints, whose Secretary Margaret Terry, provided a back-up service to the increasing number of BACE members. In 1965 it was decided that working from the offices of a paint manufacturer was not in the best interests of a professional membership body, so the Council moved the offices to 14 Belgrave Square and appointed Kathleen Bloomfield as a full time Secretary and she worked closely with the, then Hon. Secretary Charles Booker, from that address.
In 1980 the Council of the Institute felt that a move away to work in conjunction with a “sister organisation”, the Institute of Metal Finishing, would be in the best interests of our organisation, so when all the paperwork was detailed and signed up, the move to IMF Birmingham office in Holloway Head took place in 1982 and one of the IMF staff, Mary Whetnall, was made responsible for the Institute of Corrosion’s administration, assisted by her IMF administration team, all promising to keep ICorr and IMF separate!
As many of you will remember although the facilities, the Council meeting room, the services and the support was satisfactory the independence of our Institute was progressively being lost and so some four years later Council, under the Presidency of the first Chairman/Executive President of our Institute, Jim Bown took steps to remove our organisation from the IMF building and they found the first of our premises in Leighton Buzzard, located at 17 Market Square.
Coupled with this move the success of the conferences and exhibitions from a financial aspect had enabled us to appoint our own full time Executive Secretary, Keith Vincent, who organised the move from Birmingham to Leighton Buzzard in 1987. However, following the departure of Keith Vincent and his team of ICorr staff which, at its peak numbered six, all had to leave for financial reasons and I was asked to take over on a part time basis, the running of the Institute, between 1992 and 1994. When we had turned things around with new contracts with IBC and three successful conferences and exhibitions, I was able to hand back over the Institute and get back to my proper job with the arrival of Brian Weston to manage the offices on a part time basis.
Following that change we then had our second move within Leighton Buzzard to Leck House, which was organised by Brian Weston in conjunction with Gill Inwood and we remained at Leck House until the initiative of Presidents John O’Shea and Robert Edyvean resulted in purchasing our own building, a major first in the history of our Institute and we then relocated our offices to Corrosion House at Vimy Court.
Gill Inwood continued to manage the office admin on a contracted out basis, together with Cerri Sweet and since moving to our latest rented property, (members can be reassured that the money that was acquired from the sale of Corrosion House has been put in a ring fenced account)! We still continue to operate from this latest Leighton Buzzard office and although Cerri has left temporarily on maternity leave and congratulations, she has now her first child, we have taken on Denise Aldous from Sigma Coatings to assist Gill in running the ICorr admin, still on a contracted out basis.
CONFERENCES AND EXHIBITIONS
The second section I was to cover was the history of the corrosion conference and exhibitions. The development of the Institute’s Technical Committee during the 1970’s resulted in a number of one day conferences with table top exhibitions being held in conjunction with different Branches throughout the UK. At the end of the 70’s the technical committee decided that they would hold a two-day National UK Corrosion Conference in London. At the same time an attempt was made to start a separate NACE UK Section, all of which was covered in my previous May/June issue, number 89. It is with great personal regret that our working arrangement with NACE fell apart, in the way it did, but it was inevitable once we became competitors rather than partners, for this excellent 10 year working arrangement to cease. I only hope that all those who have learned the lessons of our past history can revive this relationship, in the future.
The formation of the CCEJV coincided with the first National UK Conference, which meant that the event that had been organised for the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square in 1980 was joined by the newly formed CCEJV. There were 16 technical presentations and 12 work group meetings at this event with over 200 delegates attending for the two days, with a £3,000 surplus, which in those days was like winning the lottery! We then progressed with further events being held in the Cairn Hotel in Harrogate in 1981, the Cunard International Hotel in London in 1982 and the Metropole in Birmingham in 1983.
The 1983 event was the first of the break away from the Morgan Grampian Group and although we were not permitted to use the name of Correx, since this had been acquired by Morgan Grampian, we flagged it up, with the catchy title, “UK Corrosion 83, the National Conference and Exhibition of the Institution of Corrosion Science and Technology and joint venture with NACE”, some mouthful, but it took off.
As set out in the previous May-June 2009 issue number 89 history section, the 83 event with the Exhibition and Conference organised by our Institute resulted in over 100 exhibitors and 800 conference delegates attending the three day event and this remains our best ever attendance to this day.
After our success of UK Corrosion 83, in 1984 we took on the major Wembley Conference Centre, with our own Conference and Exhibition and delegate numbers remained in excess of 500, after Wembley in 85 we move to Harrogate and in 86 back to Birmingham, still organising our own exhibitions, but with a different exhibition contractor. In 1987 we moved to Brighton for two successive years, since the 87 event was successful and we decided to organise and hire the same venue for our combined event with EuroCorr 1988 and although our conferences traditionally had been held in November or the very end of October, this second event with EuroCorr was held in the first week of October from the 3rd to 5th in 1988.
With the arrival of Keith Vincent and the move from Birmingham to Leighton Buzzard, our 1989 event was held in Blackpool, and was administered by the Leighton Buzzard Office, with the timing changed to the middle of November and this was the last event where we were working (only just) with the newly formed CEA. Following the split with NACE the 1990 conference was held at Sandown Park Racecourse and was organised by the Institute of Corrosion in conjunction with the European Federation of Corrosion during the last week of October. In 1991 the event reverted back to Manchester, where it was administered by IBC and again in 1992.
There was a break in 93 and the conference reverted to the South Coast in 1994 at Bournemouth International Centre, with the exhibition being organised by the Turret Group, the former company of Hill Media, our current Correx organisers. There was then again another break and in 1999 attempts were made to organise a joint conference with BINDT and although this went ahead, entitled NDT 99 and UK Corrosion 99 there were over 100 papers over 24 sessions, but only 19 were corrosion related and when the repeat of this exercise was discussed for Torquay in 2000, our Institute declined to proceed, in view of the BINDT domination of the previous event.
Two very successful conferences were held in 2001, an ICorr/NACE project entitled Corrosion Odyssey 2001, incorporating UK Corrosion 2001, this event although a financial liability was technically successful.
The 2002 event was held in Cardiff and again this was similar to Edinburgh, in that it was a financial liability, but a great technical success. The Institute then reverted to the original venue in Harrogate at the Cairn Hotel where UK Corrosion 2003 was held with table-top exhibitions also organised by the Institute.
Similar small events have been held at Manchester and also at Sheffield, but much of the original databases and exhibitor details had been lost and so these events organised by Manchester University and OCCA showed that the event organising was on a decline and the exhibition virtually non existent.
The formation of Correx Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of
Corrosion, which we were able to get as soon as the name had been dispensed with by the Morgan Grampian Group and its successors, was used to revive the exhibition and conference at the NEC building in Birmingham along side Surface World, organised successfully in the past by Hill Media. A report on this event was covered in issue 92 – Nov/Dec issue recently circulated.
THE MAGAZINES OVER THE YEARS
Finally, in this section I would like to cover the development of the member’s magazines as it has progressed over the years. Initially the BACE Newsletter was produced by an automatic copying process, purely in black and white and it was dealt with in-house by Dr Tiratsoo’s publishing company. Following the name change to the Institution of Corrosion Technology, the bulletin continued in a similar format, but two colours were used at great expense! At the time of the third change of name to the Institution of Corrosion Science and Technology, the magazine was still entitled ‘Bulletin’, but had increased to 8 or 10 pages and some issues had at least four colour present in the illustrations.
These bulletins continued right up until October 1982, but it was at that time that a major change was decided upon by the Council and the new magazine was entitled “Industrial Corrosion”. It was interesting to look at the list of members included in that very last October bulletin, which sadly included the obituary for Tim French-Mullen, but eminent names such as M D Allen, D W Harvey, M D Foskitt and I C Sellars were all included in the membership list. The Editor of the new Industrial Corrosion journal was Colin Bryer and Colin is till involved with certain aspects of the ICorr and Correx publicity.
It was good to see that Brian Tunnard was still the Honorary Editor of the publication and remained so on the transfer to Industrial Corrosion, right the way through until the final change to Corrosion Management and the publishers to our current publishing company, Square One, when Brian Tunnard stood down, a position he held for over 30 years and will be remembered by many of our existing members and it was for that reason that he was included in our special group of ten VIP’s for our 50th Anniversary celebrations at the Thames Barrier.
The name Industrial Corrosion was felt that this did not cover the general corrosion subject matter and a number of alternative names were considered, with Council finally deciding on the current title, ‘Corrosion Management’. Corrosion Management was launched in 1994 and continued to be edited by Colin Bryer with Brian Tunnard as the Chairman of the Editorial Team. This continued until the publishing contract was transferred from Impact Limited, Colin Bryer’s company, to Deeson Publicatons in Kent during early 2000. In view of some difficulties with the new publishers, the contract was again transferred from Deesons to our current publishers at Square One in 2002, where it has remained ever since, with Brian Tunnard standing down and Bob Akid taking over as Technical Editor.
In our first issue of 2010, the Jan/Feb issue, number 93, a report was produced for this issue of the magazine entitled ‘A New Year Presentation’. I was invited to give this first lecture of the new year by the London Branch, which gave me the opportunity to pay a tribute to Harry Hatley, whose funeral I attended on the first working day of 2010, (another VIP at our 50th Anniversary and a founder member of BACE).
The second part of my New Year presentation, which was delivered in three parts, gave me an opportunity to review the six parts of the history of the Institute, which I briefly summarised for the benefit of London Branch Members and also to be able to refresh my own memory on what I had said earlier in the year. I took the opportunity of selecting from my historical research of our Institute, three President’s actions that had occurred of great merit during the 50 years. In third place I selected, Redvers Parkins (President 1982/83) for his involvement with NACE, the CCEJV and CEA. In second place was Dr T P Hoar, President 1969/70 for his involvement with the DTI Committee on the cost of corrosion.
In first place as being the most significant achievement for the Institute, in my personal view over 50 years, I placed John O’Shea, President 2000/2002, for the acquisition of Corrosion House. Something, which had been attempted by the Institute on many occasions in the past, but never previously achieved. This was indeed coupled with the two major conferences and exhibitions in Edinburgh, Scotland and Cardiff, Wales, as well at conferences in Dublin and Cork, Ireland. He was also responsible for introducing recognition by the Science Council for our members Chartered Scientist status.
As some of you may have read in our issue number 89 last May, there was a short articled entitled, - “Inter Institute liaison”, this brief article described discussions ongoing between ICorr and BINDT, which started in 2007/2008 on a “President to President” basis, the Trustees and Council have been progressing these discussions and in my final article on our history, entitled, - “The New Millennium and where are we going, 2000-2009 and Beyond”, I hope to update the membership on the outcome of these discussions and how they will affect the future of our Institute.
If any member has any comments or corrections I would be very pleased to hear from them at our Leighton Buzzard office.
David H Deacon
