SAIMC


SAIMC Branch News

June 2001 SAIMC

Johannesburg Branch

Our May meeting was hosted by Morne Maree of Spescom, who presented a very sobering talk on the test and calibration of field instrumentation. Valuable information was given on the correct methods of field calibration and the importance of understanding the concept of reference values as opposed to measured values. A very lively Q&A session followed and our members were once again treated to specialist information from a specialist company.

Congratulations to Morne and his wife, for the birth of their daughter Megan, a week after his presentation.

Important dates to remember

* Wine tasting on 11 July.

* BMW site visit on 18 July.

Open message to SAIMC Branches and members

Around a year ago, in this very column, the Chairman made an open statement to the rest of the SAIMC Branches around the country that we, the Johannesburg Branch, would win the Branch of the Year competition for 2000. A challenge was also issued to all other Branches to try and prevent us from doing so, and to lift their game in response to our intentions of being number one, again.

Sadly, this bold challenge went unheeded, except for the Secunda Branch, who came with a big push to claim the second spot in only their first year of existence as full Branch. It is unclear why the rest of the branches around the country are performing so poorly. Even Zululand, who was once a force to be reckoned with, has faded into third place in the competition. Some of the Branches did not even submit scoring sheets for the competition last year! Thus, please take note that Johannesburg will win the 2001 Branch of the Year Competition, and no-one will even come close.

We have lost our database!

Due to factors beyond our control (honest!) the whole computerised database for the Johannesburg Branch was lost. We appeal to all our members to please e-mail their details to Cornu Perold: cornup@siemens.co.za

Johan Steyn (Chairman)

johans@kubler.co.za

Secunda Branch

A very successful site visit to the Sasol synthetic fuels complex at Secunda took place on 08/05/2001. A group of 21 members were treated to a presentation on the Sasol process followed by an interesting presentation on the multimillion rand advanced control project in progress. A coach site-seeing tour through the complex followed by a stopover at the steam plant where the members had the opportunity of experiencing the boilers first-hand followed this. The visit was concluded with a lunch where some interesting networking between members took place.

We are awaiting the orders for golf shirts and caps from the other branch members.

The golf day must still happen and we will report on that in the next issue. The next big event will be when we launch the Witbank sub-branch on 28 June 2001 in Witbank.

WATCH OUT, HERE COMES THE SECUNDA BRANCH!

Piet van Rensburg (Chairman)

piet.jvrensburg@eskom.co.za





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