IIW History 1990-2015

provide opportunities for global recognition to their professional and welding personnel. Without question, the IAB’s education, training, qualification and certification scheme was the ‘jewel in the crown’ as far as IIW was concerned. It had grown at an unprecedented rate and this growth had extended to a network consisting of 35 active and interested countries over the scheme’s first five years. 33 Like Braithwaite, who stabilised IIW’s financial situation, Smallbone’s efforts on regional activities and input into the qualification and certification scheme were instrumental in him being elected as IIW’s next President following Pekkari’s successful presidential term that ended in 2005. Smallbone epitomised the essential difference between leadership and management – vision. In many ways his appointment was to herald a new dawn for IIW and with it a different way of thinking that would test the more conservative values of the past. Some of the initiatives, indeed, consisted of new values, including proposals to ‘improve the global quality of life by the optimum use of welding technology ’34 and a guiding vision through the TMB to ‘identify and develop and create world best practices’. 35 Both these missives were to underline a major change in the way that IIW was about to see itself in a world that was now becoming a place where the social, political and the scientific landscape would move faster than it had ever done before. Philosophical meandering had no place in this new order. It was a time for pragmatism, professionalism and a continual process of renewal to keep IIW relevant. It was a world that presumed a new consensus, a shared agenda and a global partnership to achieve its objectives. 36

  1. Hicks, John – Communication – 23 July 2016.

ENDNOTES

 2. Minutes, Executive Council – Budapest, Hungary – 3/4 June 1996– S-27-96.  3. Minutes, Governing Council – Budapest, Hungary – 1 September 1996– S-44-96.  4. Eaton, Norman – Memorandum – IIW Treasurer – Interim Review of IIW Finances – January 1985.  5. Minutes, Executive Council – Item 14 Revised Budget – Budapest, Hungary – 3/4 June 1996 – S-16-96.  6. Minutes, Board of Directors – ‘IIW Secretariat Restructuring Costs’– Villepinte, France – 19 January 1997 – S-15-97.  7. ‘Obituary Mr Bevin Braithwaite’, The Guardian (UK) – 27 May 2008.  8. Minutes, Board of Directors – San Francisco, USA – 11 April 1997 – S-34-97.  9. Minutes, Board of Directors – San Francisco, USA – 12 July 1997 – S-74-97. 10. Minutes, General Assembly – ‘Treasurers Report’ – San Francisco, USA – 13 July 1997 – S-89-97. 11. Minutes, General Assembly – ‘Treasurers Report’ – Lisbon, Portugal – 18 July 1999 – S-70-99. 12. Minutes, Board of Directors – ‘IIW Financial Statement for the Year Ending 31 December 1997’ – Hamburg, Germany – S-69-98. 13. ibid. p. 10.

LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS