For the year ended 31 March 2019
Members’ Benefits
Evaluation International (EI) has continued to provide members with significant benefits including reports on evaluations and 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 1,700 reports produced by EI and its sister organisations, WIB and EXERA. Work has been completed on the new website and additionally older paper copy reports have been scanned and are now in the database.
Finances
Turnover for the year was £272,443 compared with £219,725 for 2017-18. The amount allocated to project work was £191,418 compared with £171,881 in 2017-18. All member requirements for the year were met and EI generated a surplus of £39,969. This surplus was due to three factors; firstly one large project ran late thus under-spending in the current year, secondly the number of member proposed projects was low and thirdly some members allocated additional funds to projects. The surplus will be carried over into the 2019-20 Evaluation Programme which already contains some major projects. Total administrative costs were similar to the previous year at £41,307.
Reports Produced in 2018-19
From its 2018-19 programme, EI produced 3 major evaluation reports compared with 7 evaluations and surveys in the previous year. These were:
- A Study and Report on possible uses of Johnson Noise Thermometers in UK Nuclear, Aerospace and Petrochemical Applications
- A report on the Rototherm VesselCheck ST2 liquid level transmitter
- A RFI Susceptibility Report on Vision Range of Electrical Protection Relay of Motorvision (MV2) and Feedervision (FV2)
At the beginning of the 2019-20 financial year, EI is already committed to undertake projects on the following:
- Siemens SIPROTEC Relays
- Wireless Communications in Congested Spaces
- EI website and report archive Penetration Testing
- Emphasis Reports Management Register
- An assessment of device level cyber security
- Low cost Micro Pilot Radar Study and subsequent comparative Evaluation
- AUMA Actuator Controller
- Rosemont 30-51 Pressure Transmitter
In addition to the three reports produced in the year by EI, WIB published one, and EXERA 21. This makes a total of 25 new reports available to members as a principal benefit of membership.
Exchange of Technical Information
The autumn 2018 Technical Panel Meeting was hosted by AWE in Aldermaston. The spring 2019 meeting was held at Sensor City, Liverpool, both were well attended and included a selection of interesting technical presentations.
The autumn 2019 meeting will be hosted by Siemens in Congleton.
Liaison between EI, WIB, EXERA and NAMUR
EI continues to work closely with its sister organisations, WIB in the Netherlands and EXERA in France to ensure that instrument evaluation programmes are complementary and that no duplication of work occurs. Additionally WIB welcomes EI member participation in their working groups, a list of which is published regularly to members.
There is also collaboration with the German process industry technology association, NAMUR, and the four associations continue to collaborate under the acronym NEWE. In September 2018, CLub Utilizzatori Italiani Automazione e Strumentazione (CLUI AS) were admitted to the NEWE collaboration (now NEWEC). This step is seen as positive, extending the resource and technical capability of the collaboration for the benefit of members.
Membership and Administration
At the end of March 2019, EI had 17 members including a consortium of Swedish companies whose membership is organised by SIP – the Swedish Standardiserad Instrumentprovning organisation.
In concluding I would like to thank Greg Ward and the staff of Abacus Communications Ltd who have seamlessly taken over the management of EI following the retirement of Peter Russell and the purchase of his company.
Your Directors have remained in strategic control and have held five Board meetings during the year, in conjunction with detailed management meetings with Abacus. Finally, I would also like to thank my fellow Directors and our company secretary for their continuing commitment and support.
C D Barr, Chairman
June 2019
Evaluation International Directors
- C D Barr - Consultant
- A Hill - BAE Systems, Submarine Solutions
- P Kaine - EDF Energy Generation Ltd
- A L Thomas - Consultant
- P Rose - AWE
Company Secretary
Click here to download the benefits of being an EI Director.
