68th session of the IALA Council
The 68th session of the IALA Council was held at IALA Headquarters from 11 to 14 December 2018.
After wishing a warm welcome to all those present the Secretary-General explained that since the last Council meeting in Korea IALA had been very busy. Together with the activity the workload had continued to grow. The membership was growing too and was about to reach 301 members after this meeting. This was 22 members more than the last year at the same time of the year. The Secretariat had been successful in collecting outstanding contributions, although some members still held outstanding balances. Participation in the Committees had again proved overwhelming with 120 participants in some sessions.
New steps forward had been taken with the appointment of Omar Frits Eriksson as a permanent Dean for the World-Wide Academy and, later, Minsu Jeon as Technical Operations Manager. The next step was imminent with the Deputy Secretary-General, Michael Card, the WWA Vice-Dean, Stephen Bennett, and the two Committee Secretaries, James Doyle and Wim van der Heijden, all part time consultants, having their contracts terminated at the end of the year 2018.
To replace Michael Card Omar Frits Eriksson will hold the double position of Deputy Secretary-General and Dean of the World-Wide Academy. Two full time staff members have been hired, Kevin Gregory and Tom Southall. They are both well known in IALA for their contributions to the Committee work. Kevin Gregory is primarily assigned to the Academy and Tom Southall will mainly support the technical department as a full time Committee Secretary. The assignments will be flexible and will both work for the Committees during the Committee seasons and for the Academy outside these periods.
Finally a new Accounting and Administrative Assistant, Isabelle Bracq, had been hired to support the administration department.
Turning to the World-Wide Academy he highlighted its success under the leadership of its Dean and its Chairman of the Board Professor Seunggi Gug, reminding the Council that the Academy would not exist without its sponsors, and the latter matter he drew attention, with thanks, to the agreements signed for the Academy’s future with Korea, Malaysia and Singapore; he then added that the three-year rolling agreement with IFAN, the primary Academy sponsor, was working well.
The Secretary-General touched briefly upon the change of status project, which is detailed further down in this report, thanking the National members and governments of France, Morocco and Turkey for their support in the organization.
Finally, he said that the Committees had started their work programme for the period and already produced a number of documents for approval by the Council at this session. About Committee work he stressed the importance of the task given to IALA, after it had submitted a proposal to review the IMO Resolution A.857(20) – Guidelines for Vessel Traffic Services, to produce a draft Resolution for consideration by the IMO in 2020.
The Position on the Development of AtoN Services will be reviewed by PAP at its 37th session in February 2019 to look deeper into GNSS backups, sent to the Committees (especially the ENG Committee) and brought back to Council in June 2019 after the draft amended by the Committees has been endorsed by PAP by correspondence.
The Council approved Marine Aids to Navigation – Successful Voyages, Sustainable Planet as the theme for the World AtoN Day, decided to inform IMO about the establishment of a World Marine Aids to Navigation Day on 1st July each year and reconsider the theme at a further meeting, if needed.
The Budget for 2019 was approved.
The Council approved the revised Committee work programme and 6 Model Courses, 8 Guidelines and 3 recommendations.
