Comment by BVAA CEO Rob Bartlett

BVAA’s Board – and myself especially - have the Devil’s own job each year of trying to put together a programme of events and activities that would be attractive to all our members.

Why the challenge?  Well, BVAA’s membership is a pretty disparate bunch!  We have people from the valve and actuator manufacturing sectors, distributors and stockists, repairers, suppliers of ancillary products and services, and as of recently, customers.  To say it’s a ‘broad church’ really is an understatement.  We cover the entirety of the supply chain!

That’s not all… Within that diverse population we have such a wide variety of job functions with whom we interact (management, sales, technical, marketing, etc.) it seems impossible to try and cater to everyone’s needs, right?  Actually, no.

BVAA has long held the view that we must offer is a ‘Smörgåsbord’ of services, something for everyone. 

While few members use every service and every aspect of what we provide, there’s certainly particular services that most people want, and I’ve held firm to supplying everything we possibly can that constitutes ‘The Model Trade Association’ (in my day, this used to be an associations’ guidance document, Google it today and you’ll turn up an Association for fashion models!).

Our recent Conference (see article HERE) is the perfect example of our ‘something for everyone’ approach.  We kicked off with the welcome return of Bill Cattanach and Sylvia Buchan from the North Sea Transition Authority, who provided a welcome update on UKCS project activity in decarbonisation, and emerging contract opportunities.

This segwayed beautifully into the next paper by David Linden and Nick Patience from Westwood Global Energy Group, introducing the new Global Market Outlook that BVAA had recently recommissioned on members’ behalf.

To demonstrate we didn’t simply throw it together, the James Walker tag-team of Andrew Douglas and Partick Stephen then tackled the two hot topics of Sealing Solutions for the Energy Transition, and Navigating PFAS.

Continuing in the legislation vein, Emelie Olsson from CBAMBOO helped us navigate the new and bewildering Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.  And then to close, and perhaps a potential route to avoiding all that nonsense, we had a brilliant session on Additive Manufacturing, with Andrew Woloszyn and Jhonattan Gutjahr from the Welding Institute talking on the topic of Laser Additive Manufacturing, followed by Matt Charlton (Kent Introl) who was passing on personal experiences of some of the practicalities of Qualification and Quality for ALM parts.

And then of course there was the networking for members, the convivial supper, entertainment and the sun-drenched golf.

At BVAA, we digest the feedback, and then immediately start preparing the next one!

Information about all BVAA’s forthcoming events is available from Events - BVAA

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