IIW History 1990-2015

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

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