The year is almost over and I am sure many of you will be attending well deserved year-end functions this month. This edition of the magazine has complete coverage of the SAIMC Gala Dinner 2014 and I include my speech from that evening to provide some additional context for the benefit of those who could not join the 300 guests that night.
Good evening ladies and gentleman, it is indeed a pleasure to address you all.
My team at the SAIMC has been very busy over the past 12 months and hence I have plenty to brag about tonight. I only have 10 minutes, so I will have to speak fast, but given my Indian heritage, this should not be a problem.
There are four areas I would like to cover tonight:
1. Business plan update
2. Tertiary institutions engagement.
3. Governmental and ECSA engagement.
4. Africa Automation Fair – 5-7 May 2015.
Business plan update
We commenced the year with the finalisation of the business plan and prioritising of action items. For those of you not familiar with our ambitious plans, here is a quick review:
* To gain global recognition.
* To provide a large database of expertise.
* To act as a catalyst between industry and the tertiary institutions.
* To ensure that the C&I industry’s best interests are represented.
* To achieve formal recognition of C&I as the tenth engineering discipline by ECSA. Edgar Sabela, acting CEO of ECSA and
* Dr Brooks, president of SACAC, will continue to be lobbied for their support. I am persistent!
* To keep members up to date with the latest industry trends and technology.
All of this is aimed at making our members more successful in industry.
In order to execute this plan within a volunteer organisation, we had to create a number of sub-committees to spread the work load. These are:
1. Industry standards and specifications.
2. Awards.
3. Public relations/marketing.
4. Education and training.
5. Finance.
6. Thought-leadership.
7. Automation Federation.
8. Branch categorisation.
9. Member value proposition.
10. Grading committee.
11. Disciplinary committee.
The industry standards subcommittee has done some fantastic work which you will hear about later. The public relations committee has put together this fantastic event and the education and training committee, our biggest portfolio, is chaired by immediate past president, Johan Maartens who has been very busy this year. Mothibi Thabeng chairs our thought-leadership committee and this ECSA initiative is gaining momentum this year
The second thing we did was to revamp the value proposition for our patron members and we launched a two-tier model to suit the budgets of our various patrons. I would like to thank our national and branch patron members for their generous contributions, which are critical to the sustainability of this organisation.
Tertiary engagements
There was much engagement with the tertiary institutions this year and I will highlight a few of these.
In February we officially opened the SAIMC Control Laboratory at the University of Pretoria. We were overwhelmed by the warmth with which we were welcomed and the elegant ceremony that was organised. As part of our partnership with UP, I was asked to give a guest lecture earlier this year and at the end of that discussion a student, Andrew Barnes, approached us for sponsorship for equipment. He is building a carbon cycle simulator as his project. We issued a call to our patrons and the IIG and within 24 hours we had all the C&I equipment Andrew required, sponsored by three generous companies: ABB, Beckhoff and Burkert. A big round of applause for these supporters of our future.
Last year we announced our sponsorship of the FIRST Technology Challenge for higher secondary school children. I am pleased to announce that they had their first competition in August this year and will have another in November. However, there is a funding shortfall in enabling all 21 teams to participate. We urge you all to support these children. I am sure most of you had time to interact with these future engineers at their display outside the hall and agree they deserve our support.
Government and ECSA interaction
We continued our engagement with the SIP skills demand report from last year and the report was officially presented to the Minister of Higher Education and Training on 1 September 2014. What is significant to us in this report is that our recommendation for further practical training for C&I engineers at tertiary level has been incorporated. The C&I engineer as a specialist was also acknowledged.
Also during the first week of September we participated in the inaugural UNESCO African Engineering Week at the University of Johannesburg. Thank you to ECSA for inviting the SAIMC, whose stand was one of the most popular because we invited our FTC students to show off their robot to the other children attending. Most of these children could not believe that a group of grade eight girls built a robot that could rove around the crowd collecting Lego pieces.
In July, the SAIMC made a significant contribution to the specification of the Instrument Mechanician qualification in collaboration with EWSETA. This is the first step in the SAIMC participating in specifying our engineering qualifications. A big thank you to Smirre (Martin) Smit from Eskom for involving the SAIMC in this initiative as well as Eric Carter, the Johannesburg branch chairperson.
After many months of hard work, we are proud to announce that for the first time in the history of South Africa, we have a SABS Technical Committee (TC) dedicated to Control and Instrumentation. This is a very important TC as it will be a complete mirror of the IEC TC65 and will have the following sub-committees:
* SC165A: System aspects.
* SC165B: Measurement and control devices.
* SC165C: Industrial networks.
* SC165E: Devices and integration into enterprise systems.
As you can see from these sub-committees, this is all-encompassing and we call upon all industry players to participate in this TC. It is indeed a monumental achievement and we would like to thank Gary Friend from Extech for driving this process for us.
Africa Automation Fair, 5-7 May 2015
Last year we announced that the Process Expo of the past would be completely revamped and a new show would replace it. I am therefore proud to announce that the Africa Automation Fair 2015 is the new C&I industry show. It is a step change from the past and will have a much more international feel. We are expecting a lot of international visitors and presenters and space is selling out fast. We as the SAIMC lost out on our first option due to a delay in our decision and we would hate for that to happen to anybody else out there, so book as soon as possible with Hanli and her team at Elan.
Thank you and enjoy your evening with us!
As usual, please mail me your thoughts on [email protected]. Any feedback on the Gala Dinner will also be appreciated.
Working together, achieving more, Vinesh Maharaj, President.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
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