This is a new year with some very exciting things ahead of us. Firstly, this is the last time I will be submitting a president’s letter as I will be handing the reins over at the AGM in March. The person designated to take over from me is the vice president, Vinesh Maharaj. He has taken up a lot of duties during 2012 and assisted greatly in getting the SAIMC to where it is today.
Some crucial items on the list of the SAIMC for 2013 are:
* Education and training.
* Website.
* Completion of the Constitution.
* SAIMC brand review.
As far as the education and training is concerned, I already had discussions with tertiary institutions and we found that in order to be trained as an instrumentation engineer in the conventional university would mean that a person would have to complete four different qualifications: Chemical, process, IT and electrical. This is just not a practical solution hence the complaints that the SAIMC received from industry (IIG) to investigate why they could not use people who have just qualified from a tertiary institution.
Tertiary level
1. Get tertiary institutions to develop a training curriculum for instrumentation. We have a university and a technical university who are already interested in developing this. The Automation Federation together with a university from the USA is assisting South Africa to develop this curriculum.
2. Some tertiary institutions are actually considering including ISA courses in their curriculum so that a student can write a formal ISA exam after completion of their training.
3. The SAIMC needs to introduce a bursary scheme for people wanting to study in this field
Secondary level
1. We need to introduce instrumentation to the people during their high school years. We are working with ECSA in its Engenius program to introduce engineering to the highschool students.
2. Roll out more First Lego League systems to other parts of the country to get the students interested in automation.
3. Develop other systems similar to First Lego League but in process control.
Further education
1. The SAIMC will be bringing in trainers from ISA to do train-the-trainer in South Africa. If you are interested, please contact Ina at [email protected]
2. Introducing the automation occupation models:
* Automation technician.
* Automation sales/marketing professional.
* Control systems engineer.
* Automation network engineer.
* Control software engineer.
* Enterprise integration engineer.
* Introduce the ISA certification.
* Certified automation professional.
* Certified control systems technician.
Engineering Council of South Africa – registration of professionals
It seems like 2013 is the year in which technicians, technologists and engineers will have to register. For those people who have spent many years in this industry and who have not yet registered exciting times (sic) lie ahead.
The most important part of this registration process will be the identification of engineering work. The worst part of this is that there are nine categories and instrumentation/automation is not one of them. People naturally assume that because we have expertise in electrical equipment that we should fall under electrical/electronic and forget that most of our work is actually process control and not fixing electrical gadgets.
Strategic initiatives
Three strategic initiatives the SAIMC will be involved with this year:
1. National infrastructure initiative.
2. Develop national engineering education strategy.
3. Candidate phase training and funding.
The SAIMC has been labelled as the best kept secret. This certainly has been changing during the last two years and especially during 2012. Our membership grew by 10% during 2012. Two branches have had their first Golf Days putting them on a course for huge growth possibilities. Marketing will remain one of our focus areas in 2013.
Cape Town set the stage with its Automation Award.
AGM
During March we will once again vote for a new council. It is important to note that more than 50% of Council needs to be registered with ECSA. Branch chairmen are also considered in this calculation.
This is another year in which the SAIMC will be involved in Process Expo, the biggest of its kind in South Africa. Preparations have already begun to make this expo even bigger than before.
We have people with many different talents. Please feel free to contact Council and offer your service. This is going to be a very exciting year!
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
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