[April 2008]

Dear Colleague,

I have had the honour and pleasure of being chairman of the Power Industries Division for two and a half years. It is now time to hand over to somebody else. 

Terrence Tovey has taken over the position of Chairman from January 2008, I wish him all the best and hope that through his leadership, the Power Industries Division and the IMechE will continue to prosper; I shall provide him with all the support I can, and I hope you will do the same.

Over my chairmanship I have tried to remember that the IMechE can only prosper if the grass root membership is satisfied with the services provided and that our role as Power Industry Division is to serve you the members; hence the changes to this newsletter; our activities at political level to ensure that the voice of engineers is heard in Westminster as well as the ongoing program of conferences, seminars and lectures that I hope you will continue to support in future.

More needs to be done to ensure that the IMechE remains relevant to your life and much more effort needs to be focused on our young engineers, however, as I have written many times before, this is not a one way street, those of you who can take an active involvement in the activities of the Institution, are those people who will get the most out of the Institution.  For starters we are hoping to have web forums up and running in the very near future. This will give all of us a much more convenient way of communicating and interacting with each other.  Every time I read the paper magazine we receive from the Institution, I am amazed by the level of debate in the letter section about electricity and climate change; if we can replicate this level of debate on the web forums, I am sure they will be a success.

I take this opportunity to thank all of you for the support you have provided me over the period of my chairmanship and fervently wish Terrence the best of luck in his new position.

Franz Barillaro
Chairman - Power Industries Division
2005 - 2007

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