19th April 2004
Minutes of the first Annual Business Meeting of the International Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organisations (INSHPO) held in Harrogate, UK, 19 April 2004 .
Present: John Lacey, President, IOSH (UK) (Chair)
Laurence Dufour, International Affairs Officer, IOSH (UK) (Secretariat)
John Boerefyn, President, CSSE (Canada)
James "Skipper" Kendrick, President, ASSE (US)
Paul Faupel, IOSH (UK)
Fred Fortman, Executive Director, ASSE (US)
Chi-Ming Law, COSHA (China)
Pam Pryor, SIA (Australia)
Satish Purmessur, President, IOSHM (Mauritius)
Martin Ralph, IFAP (Australia)
Rob Strange, Chief Executive, IOSH (UK)
Lawrence Waterman, President Elect, IOSH (UK)
Apologies: none
01/04 Welcome to new members from John Lacey, host President
John welcomed everyone to the meeting.
02/04 Introduction and background of each organisation
All present introduced themselves and their organisation briefly. The organisations represented around the table were: IOSH (The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health) from the UK, CSSE (The Canadian Society of Safety Engineering) from Canada, ASSE (the American Society of Safety Engineers) from the US, IOSHM (the Institution of Occupational safety and Health Management) from Mauritius, COSHA (China Occupational Safety and Health Association) from China which was represented by Chi-Ming Law as an observer, SIA (Safety Institute of Australia) and IFAP (Industrial Foundation for Accident Prevention) from Australia.
03/04 Minutes of meeting - 04 th November 2003
The minutes of the last meeting held in Saskatoon, Canada on 04 th November 2003 were agreed and signed by the chair.
04/04 Actions relating to the last meeting
Fred has registered the INSHPO logo in the US, which means international coverage as well due to International treaties.
Action: Tim Fisher at ASSE to communicate to Laurence the details of a Brazilian organisation.
The Power Point presentation has been completed. Thanks were recorded to Kelly Fanella for her work. Some amendments were required in order to reflect the addition of new members. Action: Secretariat to amend presentation as agreed and liaise with Kelly
• replace "founding members" by "members"
• date and number the Power Point version
• list all members in alphabetical order
It was agreed that, whenever possible, an INSHPO meeting would be organised in order to coincide with one of the members' conferences and also, if possible member organisations should promote INSHPO through an "international stream" within their conference.
There should be one Annual Business Meeting per year which should be planned ahead and rotated across the globe.
05/04 Invoices
The secretariat has invoiced ASSE, CSSE and IOSH to cover the set up costs. There was discussion about the membership costs for 2004 and it was agreed that, for equity in treatment, all members should pay the membership fee for the remaining 6 months of 2004. Action: Secretariat will invoice all the organisations for the remaining 6 months of 2004 by end of May and will produce the invoices for 2005 membership by Autumn 2004.
Action: CM Law to let secretariat know about COSHA's position on the above matters.
06/04 INSHPO structure and elections
Based on the by-laws, there were discussions about the Executive Council of INSHPO and the functions of its officers. The following decisions were taken:
The Secretariat was confirmed as IOSH for two years from the date of this meeting. It was also agreed that the Secretary-Treasurer would not be nominated from the same organisation as that which provides the Secretariat in order to ensure that there is some "distance" between the two functions for the purposes of probity/audit.
Four members need to be elected for the four positions (President, Secretary-Treasurer, President Elect and Vice-President) and each organisation needs to nominate a representative who will be elected until the end of 2005. It was highlighted that this represented a commitment of a maximum of 4 years.
A named deputy can represent the nominated director if he/she cannot attend the meeting, provided their name is communicated to the secretariat in advance. Some ambiguities in the by-laws needed to be clarified.
Art IV sect 1: the 2 nd sentence to be deleted.
Art V sect 7: The Secretary- Treasurer shall ensure that all monies are kept , financial books and accounts of INSHPO in a legal and ethical manner.
Action: Secretariat to amend by-laws, circulate and Kelly to update the web site accordingly .
Once the Executive Council is appointed, they and the Board will take over the running of INSHPO and the process of scrutinising membership applications. To ensure that there is an audit trail from the start it was agreed that the founders - ASSE, IOSH and CSSE - would submit to this process so that it can be seen that all is "open and above board", i.e. for transparency. This would ensure there is a formal record, and that is important for the future to understand how the formation of INSHPO came about.
The following organisations nominated their representatives for the board:
ASSE: Eddie Greer
IOSH: Paul Faupel
SIA: David Skegg
IFAP: Martin Ralph
IOSHM: Satish Purmessur
CSSE: their representative will be selected at their June board meeting
COSHA: CM Law to report to their standing committee
Action: John B and CM to let secretariat know the name of their representative by end of June.
Once the 7 board members have been nominated the secretariat will write to all organisations to ask whether they want to stand for any of the four positions. An electronic vote will then take place to select the officers of the Executive Council.
Action: secretariat to co-ordinate the voting process.
It was also considered a good idea if a part of the website can be password protected for the Board and Executive officers in order to conduct business between the infrequent meetings. It was also recognised that some business may need to be done by tele-conferencing (phone and/or video where facilities exist).
07/04 Professional membership and reciprocal rights
Achieving mutual recognition in the future is a long and arduous process due to the diversity of CPD, the different interpretation of competence etc. CPD is also different from membership grading. The first step of the whole process is to gather data on competence standards, as set out in the objectives of INSHPO.
There was discussion about the fact that some countries do not have a CPD system or if they do, it is totally different from the others. It was emphasised that if some INSHPO members do not wish to get involved in this particular exercise there will be no pressure to do so.
(Optional) action: all organisations wishing to do so to send information about their membership criteria to the secretariat by the end of June.
It was emphasised again that INSHPO do not want to be in competition with APOSHO (The Asia Pacific Occupational Safety and Health Organisation), they are separate entities and do different things.
08/04 Update on web site
The domain names under .com ; .org and .co.uk and have been registered. Action: Canada to register their own country domain name (.ca) . It will be up to each organisation to register their own country domain names if they wish to do so.
The web site is now live and can be found under: www.inshpo.org
All users are requested to report any errors on the web site to Kelly Fanella (ASSE) or the secretariat.
09/04 Any Other Business
• Once INSHPO has reached sufficient status as a body, it can share information with other networks/organisations, such as APOSHO or ENSHPO. However, it is still too early to do so now.
• SIA are currently reviewing their courses. In the US, a separate body undertakes the accreditation of universities (not ASSE).
• CM Law extended an invitation to all to attend APOSHO 20, to be held in Beijing, China on 1 st -3 rd September 2004. CM also distributed a copy of COSHA's anniversary magazine.
• Satish extended an invitation to all to take part in next year's seminar in Mauritius.
10/04 Date and place of next meeting
It was agreed that, once in place, the Board would have to decide the date and place of the next Annual Business Meeting. A few potential locations were mentioned: SIA conference in Melbourne in April 2005, ASSE conference in New Orleans in June 2005.
It was agreed that dates of members' conferences would be inserted on the INSHPO web site. Action: secretariat to send details to Kelly for inserting on web site.
An inaugural meeting will be organised once the Board of Directors is in place. It was agreed that there will be one Annual Business Meeting every year (by-laws art VII sect 2) but other interim meetings will be held as well - the next being possibly, in Beijing in September 2004.
Annexes:
PP Presentation
Annual subscription costs
Distribution: Attendees of the meeting
Mark Hansen
Eddie Greer
James 'Skipper' Kendrick
Gene Barfield
Fred Fortman
Kelly Fanella
John Boerefyn
Jim Allan
Wayne Glover
Eleanor Lawson
Paul Faupel
John Lacey
Lawrence Waterman
Rob Strange
David Eves
Sarah Hamilton
LD
Leicester UK
April 2004