The board began with the first of four in-person board meetings on January 10 & 11 in Denver, Colorado. We discussed the goals of all the committees, what needed to be done to achieve those goals, and what, if any, budget dollars were needed to be set aside. We discussed how we could invite new members. We discussed how the board could mix and get to know the membership better. We discussed the structure of our annual industry conferences, how we can better provide professional educational seminars, and give the manufacturers opportunities to highlight their products to individual contractor members.
You've heard presidents in the past remind you how important the committee projects and activities are to this organization. Our Spring Educational Committee Action Meeting is coming up soon. April 4, 5 & 6, 2002, in Denver and I personally invite you to join us. As you review the rest of this newsletter, you will get the details on projects like the Standards Task Force. This task force will be working with a committee inside of ASTM to create the second half of our inspection standard. This standard will affect your business soon. We need your input to make sure we represent you in that document.
I continue to chair your code committee this year and it always can use more help. We submitted two code proposals this year. They are outlined in detail later on in this newsletter.
The Program Committee is using the responses from the questionnaire to help prepare this year's meetings.
The Education Committee has its hands full again this year with plans to finish the presentation featuring FM's 4991 Approval Standard and beginning a series on education for the on-site installation of Fire Stop systems. This project is huge, but needs to be done.
The Marketing Committee has already had the tower in a trade show with 3M and plans are underway to attend more shows this year.
The Technical Committee always has a long list of "to do's" - everything from setting up a place to post helpful information on the web to developing a labeling standard.
As you can see there is much to do this year. I would ask that, at a minimum, you would: (1) support a committee in some fashion; and (2) you would obtain your FM Approval status if you have not already done so and help this industry grow with integrity and reliability.
Thank you,
Kathleen Taraba
Your President