Dear Member,
Although 2021 was demanding and testing for us all, once again, thanks to the efforts of our staff, colleagues and yourselves our members, I am happy to report that our organisation rose to the challenges and completed another successful year.
We are especially pleased at the tremendous success of our free virtual training programme. Whilst we thought that the additional advantage of members not having the inconvenience of travelling and taking days off work to attend these courses would be attractive, we did not expect the response we have had. Over the year, more than 550 people attended our wide range of courses demonstrating a great desire for training, a need we are more than happy to focus on going forward. This has inspired our lecturers to create more courses resulting in the comprehensive virtual training programme we have for 2022 which again will be free to all our members.
GEARS 2021 our annual gear conference was again successfully run in a virtual format. Free to members we offered fifteen papers and attracted record numbers of attendees from home and around the Globe. However, notwithstanding these successes we recognise that virtual courses and conferences are not perfect. People have missed the networking opportunities and the interaction with lecturers and some courses demand hands on experience to be successful. We are re-introduced face to face events that will run in conjunction with our virtual programme in 2022.
During the year we also worked with the IMechE who not only included some of our courses in their training programme but were also happy to launch our Webinar, ‘Mechanical Power Transmission and the Joy of Gears’ spreading the word of both gears and the activities of the BGA to over two thousand people who either saw these live or have since viewed recordings on YouTube.
Throughout last year the BGA became more active members of EUROTRANS, the body representing organisations like ourselves, in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Turkey. This activity being so successful that our members presented all five technical papers at their International Drive Technology meeting held in October. Also, we are very pleased to connect with Engrena ITA the Brazilian gear and power transmission organisation at GEARS 2021 and were delighted to welcome them as members in January 2022. These actions further increased our global connections and expanded the networking opportunities for our members.
We are pleased to continue with the unique BGA benefits to members. On-line access to the 25 most important standards that affect our industry will continue to allow all our members to have 24/7 access to the latest versions of these critical ISO BSI standards that would cost each member over £6000 to purchase. We are more than happy to consider adding additional standards to this list if you have any suggestions.
In conclusion I am happy to report that the last year we maintained our membership numbers and achieved another sound financial year. Not only do I thank you for your efforts and support of our that helped to achieve this but look forward to continuing to work and meet with you again during 2022
All the best
Graham Penning OBE
Chairman of the Executive Council of the BGA
Go to the publications section of the BGA Website to download the report.
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