We are officially in the middle of autumn and the pre-winter chill will soon arrive here in Gauteng! I am pleased to announce however, that things are as hot as ever at the SAIMC. Council decided at the recent AGM to re-elect me as president for a second term in order to complete the work started in 2013. In line with the constitution this will be my last term, and we are grooming new blood to take over the Presidency in 2015!
The new concept of continuity of effort by way of the overall business plan to guide future presidents is working well, as council now builds upon last year’s gains. The new council received a mandate from both our ordinary members as well as patron members to continue with the execution of our business plan at the AGM. We have received support from both fraternities regarding the financial commitments required to execute this ambitious, but long overdue plan for the benefit of all members of our industry. The plan will be phased to ensure that we don’t spread ourselves too thin. We will be approaching more industry end users in the coming months to become patron members of the SAIMC and also co-opt their staff onto branches and council so we can get better alignment with their needs.
The requirement for professional registration by members of our entire engineering community, irrespective of discipline or sector, will very soon be a reality (if not already at the time you read this letter). You may have seen the CBE notice in the Sunday Times, some time back? (http://tinyurl.com/nlypj9q) The SAIMC is willing and able to assist our members to become professionally registered irrespective of them being a new graduate or a member with 20 years’ experience. This service and mentoring is free to members, but will be charged on an hourly basis for non-members. Please contact our secretariat on [email protected] for more information.
The committee for the Strategic Infrastructure Project (SIP) has made some progress on the mammoth task of identifying the engineering skills required for the execution of these mega-projects for the betterment of our country and most importantly for the growth of our economy. The report for the number of human resources required to be employed and developed over the next 15-20 years was submitted in late March. I am the convenor for the Electronic Engineering discipline and we are now collaborating across the country using the web-based tools provided for by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), to further refine these numbers and the plan. Refer to http://tinyurl.com/ncdkkjh for an easy reference to the SIP education and development programme.
The second important national task that the SAIMC is assisting with is that of Thought Leadership in association with ECSA (http://tinyurl.com/neua447). The SAIMC, you may recall, is leading the Control & Instrumentation aspects and has convened a team in 2013 to assist with this. We will soon be calling for new nomination to serve on this team in order to take this project further and hence ensure we have some input into the future of our country and industry over the next 20 years! We look forward to members of the industry, irrespective of being an SAIMC member or not, joining this team to define the future for automation and control in South Africa.
That’s my first letter of my second term as president and I am looking forward to another great year of serving our members!
Please e-mail me your thoughts on [email protected], so council and I can serve you better.
Working together, achieving more, Vinesh Maharaj, President.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
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