The Chair writes….

Firstly, welcome to the first edition of ‘The Chair writes…’ from the Structural Concrete Alliance, and for those that I have not spoken to may I on behalf of the Alliance board wish you all a happy and prosperous new-year.

It’s been a busy period for Alliance business. The first meeting of the year was held on the 13 January 2020. This was well attended by the Board, both in person and via Skype. Here we agreed on reporting lines for the Secretariat to prevent confusion on information required. After many revisions, we agreed on the Alliance Constitution and an administration agreement for Alliance. Personal thanks from myself to AGM for the effort and work put in to allow us to finally sign these documents.

We also had the Publicity meeting on the 12 January 2020 where there were many items on the agenda. Positive changes for 2020 – and hopefully for many years to come – include revamping and renaming the Practical Demonstration Day to become a ‘Training Day’. While the CPD Roadshows will now become ‘Meet the Experts Seminars’

I was on the sub-committee developing the ‘Meet the Experts’ theme, along with Lucy Stone and Anna Hayes, and the Board agreed this as well as the new ‘Training Day’ format put together by Lisa Collins, Steve Richards and Mike Threadgold. Keep an eye out for these to be advertised and look out for the call for support from members of each association. Let’s make these new events great successes.

To refresh your memory, make sure you read the review of the last Demonstration Day published in the February 2020 edition of Concrete magazine. Keep an eye out for that!

The Alliance will also be exhibiting at Bridges 2020 in March, which I know a lot of members attend. I have volunteered to man the stand so pop across and say hello…

With regards to training, the CPA has announced training dates for the ISO-approved Level 2 and Level 3 reinforced concrete courses. We have one of each course being held at the excellent facilities of IMechE in Sheffield and the new offices of ICorr in Northampton. If you have any staff that need training to these levels then have a look at the website for the dates, I would like to thank the course tutors Chris Atkins (North Courses) and Chris Wozencroft (South Courses) for their continued teaching.

The Alliance has now been granted CiTB funding for its new courses and will soon be putting out a call for two members who wish to train to become approved Internal Qualified Assessors and for six to train as Assessors. Again keep an eye out for this calling notice if this may be of interest.

As with all things we wish to do either as an Alliance or through each of the member associations, we rely solely on the support and contributions from members. I ask that if you have any new case studies or articles to highlight achievements either of individual companies or joint ventures then let AGM know and we can get these promoted and to help make these events a massive success!