BFPA Directory 2019

The Ex-President memoirs We currently have 225 members within the BFPDA and 81 within BFPA membership. These figures show considerable growth over the past few years, particularly on the distributor side. With regard to the company I work for, only Pirtek UK’s head office was a BFPA member when I first joined the Association; Pirtek franchisees had yet to sign up. However, after securing my seat on the Association board I was keen to ensure that Pirtek franchisee organisations were also encouraged to come on board as individual members of the BFPDA. This resulted in a substantial increase in membership numbers from Pirtek as well as a massive commitment from the Pirtek network to improve our already robust safety practices with the hydraulic industry. Shared ethos When I became Vice President of the BFPA in May 2013 I set out to ensure member companies all embraced the same kind of ethos with regard to standards and training because, like all other industries, our reputation rests on the quality of products we offer and the level of service we can provide in terms of maintenance and repair etc. Similarly, when I later became President of the Association May 2015, I was determined to promote the BFPDA Hose Accreditation Scheme as strongly as possible. Indeed, over the past few years we have seen a sizeable increase in people taking up this initiative. During my Presidency, the BFPA continued to introduce extremely good courses, largely compiled by Martin Kingsbury together with a dedicated group of professional consultants. These courses are important not just in terms of encouraging greater practical efficiency within our industry but also from the point of view of encouraging greater awareness of health & safety working around hydraulics and pneumatics. For example, the BFPA is always keen to get across the message that incidents such as hose injection injuries can be extremely very serious; even life-threatening. Incidentally, Pirtek has designed an award-winning safety glove which strengthens the BFPA’s work in encouraging greater awareness of the risks surrounding fluid injection injury. Another initiative I encouraged during my time as President was our continued work on minimum education requirements. Over the past couple of years, there has been some outstanding work conducted by our Education and Training committee who have put together a set off minimum recommendation for hydraulics and the pneumatics. One was later completed under current President Alastair Johnston’s incumbency. An initiative addressing minimum education requirements in electronics is also due to be released soon. The right qualifications Something we introduced around the same time was the training academy passport. The passport is a convenient and quick way for members to show customers they have all the right qualifications for the job at hand. Ensuring customers can rest assured that the people they have engaged to work on their hydraulic equipment are suitably qualified is a highly valuable benefit. During my Presidency it was a pleasure to work with the Association’s team of experts. CEO Chris Buxton, for example, is always keen to focus on any opportunity that could benefit the membership or our industry as a whole. This has, for instance, revolved around Government lobbying opportunities to encourage additional funding or better standards etc. Sarah Gardner’s work on statistics is second to none and a keen point of interest for most of our membership. On the industry standards side, it has been a pleasure working with Yvonne Pearman. She is extremely proactive and dedicated and recently won an award for her outstanding contribution to our industry. With regard to our technical committees, we as an Association are always extremely grateful to the people who give up their valuable time. Many have their own companies to run, but it’s heartening to see the level of commitment they are willing to give to the committees in order to further the interests of our industry as a whole. However, our industry needs to embrace digital transformation, and the younger generation of entrepreneurs and engineers is just what we need to ignite a stronger passion in this direction. Looking ahead, I think there is a lot of scope on the motion control and digital transformation side that we need to develop further in the form of training and education initiatives. I also believe it would be highly beneficial to have a legally enforceable passport that people can produce when they work with hydraulics – a little like the Gas Safe Register. Additionally, I would like to see the BFPA encourage the rejuvenation of the BFPA’s Motion Control Alliance initiative. After all, the fluid power industry is not an island and needs to work closely alongside other Associations that are active within the wider remit of motion control and digital transformation. You could say that we are all in this together. Working together 48 www.bfpa.co.uk By Paul Dunlop.