822P90106PCE UAE (NEWSLETTER2009No01)AM                                 CHECK WEB: www.pceuae.net

 

Dear Colleague

2008 brought us the Credit Crunch and many significant changes.  May I wish you a better year in 2009.  While many PCE UAE related establishments in the UK closed between December 23 and January 05 we in the UAE also had shutdown times – both planned and unexpected – starting with the Eid at the end of the Holy month of Ramadan and this week a mourning period following the death of the ruler of the Emirate of Umm al Qaiwain.  In addition, many e-mail connections were cut due to a damaged cable in the Med. 

 

The PCE UAE year ended with the AGM on Thursday 2008 12 11 followed by a well attended Professional Review Preparation (PRP) meeting 0n Tuesday 2008 12 30 both as scheduled in our PROGRAMME issued in January 2008 and available on our web pages.  Meetings were held every month of the year including PRP meetings at Ghantout where those attending each month confirmed their wish to meet the month following.  

 

At these meetings it was depressing to hear from members that in one case their British based consultancy with 180 staff in UAE gave 130 redundancy notices while another building up a project team to a planned 45 had reached 27 with others en route when the client told them to cut to 15 and next day down to 5!.  PCE UAE and its members aim to improve our networking to informally provide advice and assistance from experience, eg a graduate engineer is available.  He has project co-ordination experience in mechanical and civil fields in Europe, USA, and UAE.  Our HonSec will help pass such information around. 

 

We thank our Programme Member for his efforts to maintain the pattern of Themes and Topics for the regular main meetings when frequently alternative speakers had to be found at short notice.  These meetings were held every month – the first Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, repeated the following Tuesday in Dubai with preferably a related site visit on the third. Similarly, we also thank the speakers, including members of the PCE UAE Committee, who presented interesting papers and arranged related visits – often at necessarily short notice.

 

Our PROGRAMME of events depends a great deal on efforts to include a balance of multi-discipline and specific interests.  In turn, selection of these depends on members’ wishes and suggestions ranging from their recommending a topic and speaker to offering DIY. 

 

We attach a draft PROGRAMME framework for 2009 and NOTICES for main topics for January and February.  While these will be loaded later on the PCE UAE web pages we must appreciate that the UK based PEI who receive the information from us and kindly forward it to current members in UAE have not been available to do so.  The draft is subject to change.

 

The Engineering Profession plus others closely related to it such as Management, Architecture, Building and Surveying covers a wide spectrum of specific topics.  These are not necessarily reflected in the Structure of the ETB and EC and its 50 PEI and PA institutions. We referred to British Standard BS 1000 ‘Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) (of all knowledge) and attach listing of codes related to specific Professional bodies (with overlaps).

 

While UDC has a wide listing useful for information retrieval we have also listed about 60 suggested topics under a personal grouping of 10 ‘M’ headings and invite PCE UAE members to let the PCE UAE HonSec know by e-mail any of specific interest.  We aim to match demand with supply!

 

Check attached PROGRAMME draft, NOTICES for January plus UDC & TOPIC SUGGESTIONS

Regards Er Alister I M Macmillan, Chair PCE UAE