Chairman's Statement
(For the year ended 31 March 2011)
Members’ Benefits
Evaluation International (EI) has continued to provide members with significant benefits including reports on evaluations, selection guides and product surveys that enable economic selection, purchasing and maintenance decisions for instrumentation to be made. In addition, members have been able to exchange views and technical information at Technical Panel Meetings, receive regular newsletters and make use of the EI Website. The members’ section of the website, contains a searchable database of over 1,500 reports produced by EI and its sister organisations, WIB and EXERA. A further benefit of membership is the focussed presentations and site and test house tours received by members at organisations such as the National Physical Laboratory and Sellafield Ltd.
Finances
Turnover for the year was £171,734 compared with £170,913 for 2009-10. The amount spent on project work was £136,707 compared with £135,571 in 2009-10. Administrative costs rose from £31,792 in 2009-10 to £33,404. A year-end operating surplus of £2,828 was generated compared with a slightly larger surplus the year before and EI continues to hold sufficient funds to enable it to operate from a secure base.
Reports Produced in 2010-11
In 2010-11, EI produced 17 reports. All member requests were met and the programme for the year included 5 major evaluation projects covering flowmeters, pressure meters and coupling systems.
The 12 Selection Guides and Miscellaneous Reports included coverage of flowmeters, guided radar systems, use of instruments in aggressive atmospheres, wireless instrumentation, gas detectors, oil mist detectors and legacy systems.
In addition to the 17 reports produced in the year by EI, members have also received 6 reports published by WIB and 26 reports by EXERA (2 in English and 24 in French) making a total of 49 reports as a principal benefit of membership. In addition, one of the EXERA reports in French was translated into English for the benefit of EI and WIB Members
Exchange of Technical Information
The autumn 2010 Technical Panel Meeting was hosted by NPL at Teddington and included a laboratory tour and a presentation about wireless instrumentation. The spring 2011 meeting was held at Sellafield and included a rare opportunity to tour part of the Sellafield site.
The autumn 2011 meeting will be hosted by Sira Certification Services and held in Chester.
Liaison between EI, WIB and EXERA (EWE)
The EWE Liaison Management Committee (LMC) Meeting which is held with the collaborating organisations WIB and EXERA, was organised by EXERA and took place at the EXERA office in Paris. Collaboration between the three organisations continues to give added value to EI members through the free exchange of reports.
The 2011 LMC Meeting will be hosted by WIB at the offices of DSM at Heerlen in The Netherlands.
The arrangement to translate selected EXERA reports from French into English continues to work well.
Membership and Administration
Regarding membership, I am pleased to report that TUV-NEL was recruited as an Associate Member. At the time of writing, discussions are taking place with three other potential members.
In concluding I would like to thank the staff of Abacus Communications who have very effectively managed the day to day operations of EI. Your Directors have remained in strategic control and have held five Board meetings during the year, in conjunction with detailed management meetings with Abacus. I would like to welcome back a former Chairman of the Board, Alun Thomas, who re-joined the Board as a non-executive director in November 2010. Finally I would also like to thank my fellow directors and company secretary, Derek Cornish, for their continuing commitment and support.
C D Barr
Chairman
June 2011.
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