THE
REFRACTORIES ENGINEER
President’s Column Dear Members and Colleagues
The time has arrived to write my last column. It is both a relief and a sad thought. It has always surprised me how fast two months elapsed when Dave Woodhead would give me a nudge that the next column needs writing. Once you have to put your pen to paper, you suddenly do not know what to say. Frantically you would search for ideas, maybe call a friend and ask them what you should write. However, once you sat through it there is a sort of satisfaction that fulfils you.
For those who have followed my personal life through this column, I can confirm that the wood burner is installed and that we are now ready for the winter with some management decisions not to use it as an incinerator.
During my time in the capacity of presidency I discovered many aspects regarding the IRE that I was not aware of. I have realised that without Dave Woodhead and his wife Jayne the IRE would most probably not exist anymore. Their dedication and enthusiasm is what ensures the journals are out on time and all the arrangements for the conference are done, as well as finding sponsors and new members whilst keeping the current members subscriptions in order. This may seem to be a simple administrative task for anyone standing on the side, but I can assure anyone that this is a very stressful exercise and their efforts far exceed their duties.
As one of the privileges of being the President of the IRE, I have to write about eight hundred words every two months, and though some months are easier, other times the workload is taking over any pleasures in writing. Dave on the other hand has to ensure there is enough material available to be able to publish a journal. A task much larger than just sorting out what goes onto each page, as he often has to go and find the material as well. We are unfortunately not in a position where we are flooded with articles and news to publish from which we can simply choose a selection for publishing. Somewhere in the very far past this may have been different, but as far as I was able to examine previous President’s columns, this aspect and member numbers have always been an issue.
One can of course debate whether the IRE is just not attracting the right audience for people to fight over publishing space in the journals, but from my own experience I have many requests from other organisers to present or provide papers at sometimes most irrelevant
conferences. To me this indicates a shortage of people who can or are willing to tell the world what they are busy with. Most technical people have either not the time to write papers for journals, or the companies they work for are not in favour of revealing the work they are involved in. However, we also see some conferences growing each year in numbers. My own opinion about this is that most of those diversified to cover more aspects of the industry such as production issues, process control, safety etc.
If we look at membership as another aspect, then numbers are declining, almost steadily, over many years now. This is for sure not something new. It is the people like Dave and Jayne that through their efforts managed to keep this organisation going by taking on more and more each year to save money. Without the backing of solid statistical data I would still like to comment on this; In my opinion there are not a lot of organisations in this world which is known over so many parts in the world that still exists with such low member numbers and not to forget the low membership fees. I believe this is a real achievement and indicates that the IRE will still keep going for many years to come.
The council has now agreed to spend £15,000 on appointing an independent company, Fluid, to look into making the IRE more visible and attractive in order to sign up more members as well as securing more sponsors. There are of course lots of doubts about the possible change they will be able to make because the success of any strategy will still involve the contribution of each member. They will not be able to write papers and deliver presentations, but hopefully they can secure a modern platform for the IRE to fulfil its function of educating and training within the refractory industry.
You will be reading this after our November 2019 conference. We have speakers both from Europe and the UK, and it is always interesting to hear about developments and activities from the other side of the channel. I would like to thank everyone that presented, but also everyone that made the effort to attend. I hope you have not only gained some useful information, but also made a few new friends.
My best wishes to Katy Moss, your new President for the next two years, who has great aspirations to implement new ideas to change the face of the IRE. I wish her all success in taking those ideas forward.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Jan DuPlessis Theron President
Institute of Refractories Engineers
President’s Column
November 2019 Issue
3
www.irengineers.co.uk www.ireng.org
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