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LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
Kotecki was to then engineer the process of approval of the third draft of ISO 2560.3
through IIW and on to ISO/TC 44/SC3 where the standard was unanimously approved with
the exception of one dissenting vote. It was finally published on 1 November 2002 after what
was termed ‘almost 20 years of struggle’. ISO 2560:2002 was not the first ‘cohabitation’
filler metal standard published, that honour went to ISO 14343:2002
Welding consumables
– Wire electrodes, wires and rods for arc welding for stainless steels and heat resisting
steels – Classification
, which was published on 15 February 2002.
32
This literally opened the floodgates as far as welding
filler metal standards were concerned and from that point on
publishing of these standards progressed rapidly. This was
an outstanding result and Tsutsumi was awarded the Thomas
Medal in July 2003 at the 56th IIW Annual Assembly in
Bucharest, Romania, for his contribution towards international
standardisation of welding consumables. Kotecki, earlier,
deservedly was awarded the Thomas Medal in 1999.
Prior to this impasse, which culminated in the
acceptance of ‘cohabitation’ standards, the SC-STAND met on 18 January
1995 and the Chair of themeeting, Evrard, announced that he was resigning as
Chair of ISO/TC 44, citing that he strongly disagreed with the position of the
ISO Central Secretariat on several issues regarding IIW and recommended
his successor, Mr Jean-Paul Gourmelon as Chair of ISO/TC 44. This ended
a direct relationship that IIW had with the committee for the last 47 years.
33
Evrard agreed to remain as the Chair of SC-STAND at the meeting. Shortly after this
meeting an ad hoc meeting between ISO, CEN and IIW at ISO headquarters was held on 18
February 1995 to clarify and resolve recent conflicts between the three organisations. The
purpose of this meeting was to find solutions to a number of problems regarding cooperation,
to enable a final decision on IIW’s status as an international standardising body to be made
at a forthcoming meeting of the Coordination Committee in May for transmission to the
ISO Council.
34
This was made in the affirmative when the Secretary of ISO/TC 44 was to
announce an extension of IIW’s status for a further five years at this meeting on 18 May
1995 at the Institut de Soudure.
Following the reunification of the two IIW Secretariats, commencing on 1 January
1996 Bramat, the IIW Executive Director at that time, announced at the first meeting of
the Executive Council that Mr John Hicks, the previous Secretary General of IIW, ‘would
be in charge of controlling the standardisation activity of IIW and the drafting of a set of
procedures needed to operate the IIW, along with quality assurance principles’.
35
Hicks
made a point when he reminded the Executive Council at its meeting in Budapest that he
was responsible for the overall administration of standardisation activity in IIW and that he