Start of a New Academic Year

Start of a new academic year

 

Controlling Council

This year Controlling Council will be held in Dubai 3^rd – 5^th November. It is likely that we will combine two days of workshops as well as the Council meeting.

The Controlling Council meeting in Vancouver was very useful and productive but last minute travel bookings and changes made it more expensive than we had originally budgeted for.  The cost for Controlling Council to meet should be around GBP 35,000. In Vancouver we spent over GBP 5,000 extra due late booking of flights and changes to hotel numbers.

Therefore, all branches were requested to indicate to us before 31^st July 2014 who will be their chosen representative to this meeting in November. As it stands today, we still await confirmation from over ten branches.

Whilst I understand that branches have elections for various positions (including the Controlling Council representative)  at different points of the year, it would make the preparation for this meeting much more effective and will ensure we are developing the workshop and meeting agenda with those people who will be attending the actual meeting.

It is vital that when you, as a branch, when choosing your Controlling Council representative you understand their vital role in the governance of this Institute. They must be in a position to represent your branch’s views on all items in the agenda of both the workshop and the meeting. They must also be accountable to your branch to share any pre-meeting information, and post meeting report.

We are currently planning to target our workshop time to look at three keys areas;

1. Branch support – what can we do to help branches, branch governance, branch events
2. Development of some form of international company supporter/member
3. Overall Institute governance – where do our byelaws work/ not work, what further updates do we wish to have to the governance handbook, election processes etc.

As I mentioned above, we will work together with your Controlling Council representatives to finalise the agenda.

 

Executive Council and deadline for membership applications

 

Executive Council will be held via video conference on Monday 22^nd September. Therefore, the deadline for membership applications is Friday 5^th September.

We do our best to process the applications as quickly as possible, but applications received after the deadline causes delays to all the other applications. We really need branches to help us to get all the applications submitted on time, and the completion of your vetting as swiftly as possible.

This will only give your students four weeks to complete their membership applications after their results are issued. We’ll be sending all PQE completing students a membership form with their exam results.

 

Possible Fellows – We want to encourage those members who are eligible for Fellowship to consider election to this level. Please look around your branches to see if you have suitable Members who may wish to be put forward. Don’t forget, the next election is just over two months away!

 

Results 2014 – April

As you may have read in TradeWinds (we’re delighted we made it into the maritime press!), and on our website, the exam numbers were record breaking this year. It has been a demanding few weeks as we have entered, checked and confirmed marks for students. And then started the process of producing results lists. David Barrett has already asked branches if they wish to have an individual list of students’ results sent, please do let him know.

To ensure we are as accessible to students as possible, the head office will be open from 8am till 7pm from Thursday 7^th August until Friday 15^th August.

 

Result drinks

There are student results day drinks happening in a few places on Thursday 7^th August including London, Scotland and Rotterdam. Is your branch willing to host a few drinks of students who want to celebrate/ need to drown their sorrows?  It doesn’t need to cost very much of your branch funds – in the case of London, the branch is partnering with a local teaching organisation, all students and members have been invited, it’s a cash bar  and the branch will stump up the cash for a few bowls of chips.

 

AGM and prize giving

The AGM and prize giving has been scheduled for Friday 24^th October. Please work within your branches to find people who can attend this important meeting.

 

Shipping Network submissions

The deadline for submissions for our December issue is 31^st October 2014.

You can send your submissions to Carly directly – editor@ics.org.uk

Our Executive Council were interested in publishing Shipping Network six times per year (instead of four). If we want to invest in publishing more often, then we need to know what subjects your members wish us to cover. Please feedback anything you hear from members good or bad, about interesting or less interesting articles we’ve published in the past and what they’d like to see more of!

We would like to make our magazine accessible, and one way to do this is to allow it to be read electronically. As we investigate iPad and kindle options, please follow this link to see how we would like to display the magazine in via our website. Your thoughts are very much welcomed.

http://www.calameo.com/read/0001302450c1459ecaf81?authid=aNlyjLob05fI

 

Branch documentation

Some branches have been struggling with submitting the correct documentation to the head office on time.

There are two documents that are required by our byelaws to be submitted.

1. Annual Accounts – submitted in draft form by 30^th June and audited/ finalised by 30^th September. We are happy to help supply a template for your accounts if you’d like assistance.
2. Branch rules.

There are two documents that are essential to the running of the Institute.

1. AGM minutes (draft form) within 30 days of your AGM.
2. Minutes of meetings when you elect your Controlling Council Representative (if this happens outside of the AGM).

Finally, there are documents that would be useful

1. Minutes of your branch committee meetings.
2. Your planned schedule of events for the forthcoming year.
3. Your branch news letter (if you produce one) – more on this later in this email.

We understand the burden of administration on branches, so please prioritise the first two documents.

 

Reconciliation payments

Reconciliation and payments with branches which collect funds on our behalf was quite late in the financial year last year. We had hoped that the new database would allow us to speed up this process, but the move to a new system causes unexpected glitches and slowed us down. We hope this year we have ironed out all the issues, and we will be working together with branches to follow this schedule of reconciliation and payments.