The President Writes ….

Welcome to the final edition of our magazine for 2021 which also marks the midway point of my Presidency and so this is a great time to reflect
on the past year.

As we came into 2021 we were all hopeful that Covid would be behind us and we could start getting back to our regular way of operating. This wasn’t the case, but that didn’t hold us back and the past year has been full
of activity and progress.

Our branch meetings continued to be held virtually and were well attended.  In April the annual Corrosion Engineering Division (CED) working day was held virtually with over 60 participants for the full day. These events provided an opportunity to improve how we host virtual meetings and we will continue this going forward.  In fact, by the time you read this we will have held our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in November which was both in-person and virtual.  The virtual option provides a way for members who are not able to attend in person to connect with us – which is what we are about. A bonus is that as we are all thinking about the environment and the recent COP
26 conference, it reduces our carbon footprint as we travel less.

By mid-year we were planning the resumption of in-person meetings and this was led by our Aberdeen and London branches. In September we held the Corrosion Science Symposium at the University of Manchester.  These events have been very successful and were all in person and virtual.

For our 2021 awards we had many deserving candidates for the awards committee to choose from – they had a tough time. Many congratulations to the winners who were:

UR Evans award: Professor Mary Ryan.
Paul McIntyre award: Dr. Bijan Kermani.
Henry G Cole award: Dr. Bill Cox (awarded posthumously and received by his wife and daughter at the AGM).
Lionel Shrier award: Lawrence Coghlan and Charlie Wand.

Our social media presence continues to grow and we now have over 10,000 followers on our two LinkedIn sites – as a reminder we had zero in February 2020!  We took a pause over the summer with our blogging but will be restarting soon. If you have any suggestions for blogs, please let
me know.

Our training courses have been a real highlight of the year.  You may recall all of our CP courses have been updated and are compliant with ISO 15257.  We also opened a new, state of the art CP training center at the offices of Corrosion Control Services Limited (CCSL) in Telford. Since releasing the new courses we have delivered over 140 separate training classes.

In the world of surface treatment we have released completely updated Passive Fire Protection (PFP – epoxy Levels 2 & 3) courses. New PFP cementitious courses are being written, as is a new Insulation inspector level 2 course. We have commissioned a Microbially Influenced Corrosion (MIC) course and have several other new programmes in the pipeline.

Our Industrial Coatings Applicator Training Scheme (ICATS) which is provided by Correx (an independent company that is owned 100% by ICorr) remains in high demand.

Our training courses are also in demand from outside the UK. We have
seen growth in China and have just agreed terms with ABRACO in Brazil to deliver a conversion course to our Coating Inspector level 2 certificate.  Encouraging talks are also occurring in Egypt, Greece, India, Libya
and Malaysia.

As a result of feedback from many of our members we are developing a proposal to update our website and members database.

During the year we had two audits: one for our ISO 9001 accreditation and one for our license to issue the Chartered Scientist (CSci) credentials. We passed both audits with no significant findings.

Our Young ICorr group continues to be very active and one highlight was the “Thesis in 3 minutes” on-line event, where several young engineers gave enthusiastic talks based on their current work.

I hope this has given you a flavour of what’s been going on and I know many of you have either led or been involved in this. I cannot thank you enough for all the time, energy and enthusiasm you give to our Institute.

I hope you all find time to have a break over the festive season and I’d like to take this early opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year.

Until next time,

Bill Hedges, Institute of Corrosion President
Email: president@icorr.org

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