Dear Member,
Although the last twelve months were demanding and testing for us all, once again, thanks to the efforts of our staff, colleagues, and yourselves our members, I am happy to report that our organisation rose to the challenges and completed another successful year.
We are especially pleased at the tremendous success of our free virtual training programme. Whilst we thought that the additional advantage of members not having the inconvenience of travelling and taking days off work to attend these courses would be attractive, we did not expect the response we have had. Over the year, more than 550 people attended our wide range of courses demonstrating a great desire for training, a need we are more than happy to focus on going forward. This has inspired our lecturers to create more courses resulting in the comprehensive virtual training programme we have for 2022 which again will be free to all our members. Details of this training and other information are presented on our new website developed and launched by Kirsty our senior administrator last year.
GEARS 2021 our annual gear conference was again successfully run in a virtual format. Free to members we offered fifteen papers and attracted record numbers of attendees from home and around the Globe. However, notwithstanding these successes we recognise that virtual courses and conferences are not perfect. People miss the networking opportunities and the interaction with lecturers and some courses demand hands on experience to be successful. Therefore, as soon as possible, and it is safe to do so, we will re-introduce face to face events that will run in conjunction with our virtual programme. Going forward it is our intention to relaunch our Technical Awareness Days that were so successful in the past. These are already in preparation and will be both virtual and face to face when safe and practical.
During the year we also worked with the IMechE who not only included some of our courses in their training programme but were also happy to launch our Webinar, ‘Mechanical Power Transmission and the Joy of Gears’ spreading the word of both gears and the activities of the BGA to over two thousand people who either saw these live or have since viewed recordings on YouTube.
Throughout last year the BGA became more active members of EUROTRANS, the body representing organisations like ourselves, in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Turkey. This activity being so successful that our members presented all five technical papers at their International Drive Technology meeting held in October. More recently we are very pleased to welcome Engrena ITA the Brazilian gear and power transmission organisation as new members. These actions further increasing our global connections and expanding networking opportunities for our members.
We are pleased to continue with the unique BGA benefits to members. On-line access to the 25 most important standards that affect our industry will continue to allow all our members to have 24/7 access to the latest versions of these critical ISO BSI standardsthat would cost each member over £6000 to purchase. We are more than happy to consider adding additional standards to this list if you have any suggestions. Additionally, you will find attached to this letter a copy of our unique industry trade statistics document, that is only available to members.
More exciting news is that in the coming month we will complete our move to the new facilities as part of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne Advanced Engineering Research Hub in Walker where we hopefully be able to meet with you in 2022.
In conclusion I am happy to report that the last year we maintained our membership numbers and achieved another sound financial year. Not only do I thank you for your efforts and support that helped to achieve this but look forward to continuing to work with you again during the coming year.
All the best
Graham Penning OBE .
Chairman of the Executive Council of the BGA