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LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
Dr Glenn Ziegenfuss (USA) recommended that, in addition,
a visionary/strategic planning session should be held with the help
of a facilitator, to progress strategic planning as an important part of
the Institute’s future planning process. Despite some reservations
about timing, a successful strategic planning meeting was held in
Abington (UK) in late November 1997. In conjunction with this
meeting, Eaton also undertook a review on behalf of IIW
through a questionnaire distributed to Member Societies.
The response from the questionnaire and the results of the
strategic planning session were used as the basis for the
development of a Business Plan that was then circulated
to Member Societies. The document produced as a result
of the meeting was quite comprehensive and covered
some sensitive issues including a proposal to review
the existing scopes of all the Working Units, including restructuring the Commissions.
Mr David Reynolds (Canada), the Chair of the Technical Committee, relayed comments
back to the board that little dissent had come from the Working Units and that they were
comfortable with the proposals.
18
IIW had also commenced protracted negotiations
with the European Federation for Welding, Joining
and Cutting (EWF) for the creation of a joint
personnel qualification scheme. This eventually
led to a preliminary agreement between the
organisations at the IIW General Assembly in
San Francisco in 1997 where the launch of the
joint scheme was officially announced.
19
Following
this, a further detailed revision of the Business Plan was
unanimously adopted by the membership at the General
Assembly meeting in Hamburg on 13 September 1998.
One of the main objectives of the Business Plan was
the establishment of a universal scheme for the
education, training, qualification and certification
of welding personnel. IIW was now in a sound
position to possibly provide the level of financial backing needed to fund
such a scheme, based on the favourable decision by the French Government
that allowed IIW to recover VAT taxes attributed to its financial transactions.
Setting up an IIW International Authorisation Board (IAB) and global scheme then
started to gather pace as various resolutions were adopted by the General Assembly at its
Glenn Ziegenfuss
David Reynolds