The Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM) held its fifth face-to-face meeting from 16 – 20 October 2011 in conjunction with the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Practitioners (SMRP) Annual Conference, Greensboro, NC, USA. The theme for the conference was: Educate, Equip, Excel. Throughout the conference, there was great interaction between the SMRP Board of Directors and GFMAM representatives, with GFMAM representatives presenting five papers during the conference.
L-R Sally Nugent (Asset Management Council, Australia), Chris Yexley (PEMAC, Canada). Cindy Snedden (PEMAC, Canada), Joao Ricardo Lafraia (ABRAMAN, Brazil), Alex Stuber (European Federation of National Maintenance Societies), Tim Goshert (SMRP, USA), David McKeown (Institute of Asset Management, UK), John Hardwick (Asset Management Council, Australia), Athayde Ribeiro (ABRAMAN, Brazil), Nezar Al Shammasi, Richard Edwards (Institute of Asset Management, UK)
We are delighted to announce that our regional membership has now broadened to include Africa, with the acceptance at 3pm Sunday 16th October, of the Southern African Asset Management Association (SAAMA) as a GFMAM member. We welcome Alan Tate and Krigge Visser, SAAMA Chair and Vice Chair to the GFMAM Council.
As we are growing in membership and regional representation, the larger GFMAM Council group took the opportunity to revisit the vision and constitution of the Forum to facilitate increased growth and activity. The vision was confirmed and the governance arrangements were streamlined. Importantly, the constitution now allows significant expansion and offers a warm welcome to aligned member societies who wish to contribute.
The Enduring Objectives of the GFMAM were agreed to be:
- To bring together, promote and strengthen the maintenance and asset management community worldwide;
- To support the establishment and development of associations or institutions whose aims are maintenance and asset management focused;
- To facilitate the exchange and alignment of maintenance and asset management knowledge and practices; and
- To raise the credibility of member organisations by raising the profile of the Global Forum.
In light of our sharpened objectives, we set guidelines for how all project work will be proposed and managed going forward.
Existing projects:
Certification – The Certification project reviews existing certification schemes, as well as compares and describes each scheme. Final draft was presented to the Forum and will be available to members on the website before December 2011.
Landscape – The Landscape project is essentially a visual presentation of the Asset Management, in its broadest terms, which is being developed to support the GFMAM and its member societies to allow alignment of relevant knowledge and practices. This work was presented to the GFMAM members in its current state as well as to the attendees of the SMRP conference. It is well underway for publishing of a draft document by June 2012.
Accord – The Accord project is in early work stages. Its aim is to assist organizations who wish to develop, align and compare Asset Management Qualifications. Its completion is dependent on elements of the landscape project.
New projects: A number of new projects have been identified to increase our membership in both number and more balanced regional representation and also to assist development of member associations around the world:
Surveys – A multilingual survey questionnaire has been developed to disseminate to maintenance and asset management associations by the end of 2011.
Increasing collaboration – Several steps were taken to support and encourage collaboration between member associations. We clarified which collaboration projects should be published, which should be recognized and which should be managed by the GFMAM as a whole. The overriding goal is to encourage cooperation and collaboration with minimum interference.
Another key highlight of this fifth face-to-face meeting in Greensboro was the signing of the agreement between SMRP and Abraman, announcing that the CRMP and CRMT certification exams will be held in Brazil in Portuguese. As part of this agreement, SMRP will now start to use some questions that Abraman has as part of their Instrumentalist Inspector certification. It is planned that the first exam will be held in the first semester of 2012, and the second one will be in September during the Brazilian Congress in Rio de Janeiro.
The GFMAM Council would like to extend their deep appreciation for the warm welcome and the great hospitality of SMRP and GFMAM is looking forward to future collaboration between SMRP and GFMAM members.
The next face-to-face meeting is scheduled to take place in June 17-21, 2012 in conjunction with the IAM Conference in the UK.