Minutes of the Board Meeting held Monday, January 5th 2009

St. James Well Pub, Newport Village Centre, Port Moody, B.C.

 

 

In Attendance:

 

Alistair Beaton

Richard Smith

Roy Sluyter

Pat Haliburton

 

Apologies:

 

Don Tranter

Cecil Noronha

               

 

Call to Order

 

Alistair Beaton called the meeting to order at 12:10 hours.

 

 

1. The AMSO and the Marine Surveyors Register

 

Draft minutes from “A Meeting of Marine Surveying Organisations” (held on Wed. 10th December 2008 at the Board Room of The Nautical Institute in London) and an email received from Mr. John Lawrence, CEO of the International Institute of Marine Surveying appear to contain one or two anomalies.

 

In the minutes of the meeting held in London it is stated that attendees agreed to move ahead as an “informal organisation” to be called the Alliance of Marine Surveying Organisations (AMSO).

It was further agreed by all attendees that the AMSO should be chaired by Brian Williamson “until such time as a structure is formed and a formal chairman is elected.”

In these same minutes, it is also stated that one of the Action Points agreed by the attendees was that the “name AMSO be registered by the Secretariat”

 

Richard Smith stated that he felt that this indicated a desire to “formalize” the name.

 

Alistair Beaton, who had attended the meeting on behalf of AMSBC, stated that he was firmly under the impression that no such “formal” name had been agreed to by attendees.

 

In addition, the email accompanying these minutes sent by Mr. John Lawrence, indicates that a website and email have been setup. The website (http://marinesurveyorsregister.com) provides a space so that “organisations may register their members” and the email msr@iims.org.uk is available for initial use until the AMSO address is available. In both of these instances the inference is that they are for the AMSO.

 

Once again, Richard felt this was somewhat misleading and that our members should refrain from signing up for this register, as had been suggested by Alistair in an earlier email, until we had a firm understanding of what this register was.

 

Alistair reported that the consensus of attendees at the meeting in London was that the AMSO would be a completely independent organisation from IIMS (International Institute of Marine Surveying). As such, the IIMS would simply be one of the member organisations.

 

Based on this, it would seem that the website has been set up by the IIMS and is completely separate from the AMSO and that perhaps John Lawrence had “jumped the gun” somewhat.

 

All agreed that Alistair should contact John Lawrence for clarification on both of these issues so that we can provide an accurate report for our members.

 

 

2. AGM

 

Richard reminded everyone that our AGM is scheduled for Feb 7th 2009 and that we need to make arrangements soon.

He has agreed to arrange for the venue and that he will attempt to secure a room at the Executive Inn in Coquitlam as per last year.

 

There was no further discussion and the Meeting was adjourned at 13:00 hours.

 

The next General Meeting of the Association  of Marine Surveyors of British Columbia is scheduled for Wednesday, January 21st 2009 at 19:00 hours in The Mission to Seafarers, Waterfront Road, Vancouver, B.C.