IIW History 1990-2015

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 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 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 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

LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS