May 2018 Minutes

SAWE Canada Chapter

Executive Meeting Minutes – Monthly Teleconference

Wednesday, May 15, 2018

12:15pm – 1:00pm ET

Attendees

• Whidy Kiskunas, past board member
• Rod van Dyk, past board member
• Robert Hargrave, Treasurer
• Paul Newsham, Secretary
• Darren Gamble, Director
• David Stansfield, Vice-President
• Stuart Norris, President
• Nicolas Riou, Technical Advisor

 

Agenda

• New Items
• Current SAWE Canada Business
• Review Actions

 

New items

Report from 2018 International Conference in Texas – Robert, Nicolas, Rod and Whidy

• Whidy touched on the January 2018 Survey results and future membership
  • Presented results at 2018 conference and write a paper to summarize it.
  • ACTION: Whidy will set up a meeting to present to our general chapter membership
  • Summary: In next 10 years, 60% of the mass properties groups in SAWE currently will be gone due to retirement and no real apparent planning to hire/backfill.
  • Low retention rate with younger engineers, they often want to move onto other groups because of lack of mentorship and understanding for the importance of weight engineering
• Robert was one of the Airline Affairs chairs at 2018 International Conference
  • FAA wants to get out of standard weights, want to go to statistical methods which is open for interpretation
  • SAPOL/SAWE to come up with a RP to standardize the method and recommendations
  • Discussions on advisory circulars for Weight and Balance, Cargo, weight on wheels (WOW)
  • Onboard W&B system presentation Kirk Nance (Avix Aero, TX)
  • ACTION – Robert to share notes from Airline Affairs and Onboard W&B System
• Rod highlighted the working meeting he attended about the RP8 system to be updated

Current Year Membership – Update

• Current 25, Grace 20 (that have not renewed)
  • including 8 students/9 members (some were profs named on student papers)/2 retired/1 Company Member
• Next step to follow up with 2017 “grace” members and students
• Not really worth going further back, since there is an additional $20 USD reinstatement fee
• SAWE International is OK for us to use $60 CAD rate, provided we do our own accounting

 

Current SAWE Canada business

Website

• Current admins are Rob, Whidy, Rod, Stuart, Darren (to register), Paul, George, Nicolas and David.
• ACTION: Darren to register on WordPress – CLOSED
• ACTION: Robert and Stuart need password resets
• Paul has updated the Board members on the website and looking for what to do with the “Docs” section of the website and the “Archived Minutes”.
  • Download archived minutes and put in private docs
  • Make member only / board only areas for docs that are not accessible publicly
• Question: What would be some beneficial information that we could post other than news and board minutes to make the website worthwhile? Should we have some sort of library only available to current members of presentations, papers and useful tools that are used by our members?
  • Useful links
  • AGS, FAA W&B manual, etc
  • Trip reports from conferences
  • ACTION: Board members to generate lists of links and other useful publicly available documents that would be good to add to the website to generate interest (before June meeting)
• Upload of 2017 International Conference pictures
  • Darren to speak to Nicolas Riou to see if he can help.
  • Need to check permissions level on website.
  • ACTION: Nicolas and Robert to upload selection of 2017 International Conference photos. Nicolas to take the action and get this done

Member Survey

• Some people filled in, members and non-members
• Rod and Whidy meeting with Andy.
• Holding off on our internal survey until after discussions with Andy and to see if anything comes out of the international one.
• Involvement of Western members more (members of the board?)
• Whidy highlighted the survey results and membership forecast (notes above)
• Mentorship is very important to understand just how we essentially look after everything.
• Question: are we going to follow up with membership with a chapter survey?

Chapter Membership

• Look at sending to previous members to see if we can get back into the fold.
• What can be done for attracting new members?
• Price $60 CAD – payment by cheque or Interac, or credit card on SAWE International site for $60 USD.

SAWE Canada’s International Business

• SAWE Conference Break Sponsor – Texas 2018
• 2017 Conference Vista Laptops – Robert to clean and dispose of these, SAWE purchasing new ones for 2018 conference.
• ACTION: Robert to clean, dispose or donate old Vista Laptops.

Plans for 2018

University Outreach

Montreal

• Industry and universities presentations (particularly the one that was translated into French that hasn’t been presented yet in Montreal)
• Nicolas’ presentation to be presented to universities in Montreal
  • No action taken yet on this
  • Looking to next school year at engineering job fairs etc
• ACTION: Rod to send contact for Universite de Sherbrooke
• McGill – seems to be interested if there’s summer placements. Contact information?
• ACTION: Robert will provide Polytechnique contact information to Board for others to follow up
• ETS contact?
• ACTION: Stuart to take action for following up with the universities
• ACTION: Robert to send follow up email for grace period members and one for the students with free membership

Toronto

• Rod to do Ryerson University presentation for the interns at Safran – good outreach to students from 4 Toronto-area universities.
• No recent collaboration from Ryerson or U of T for further papers
• Whidy and Rod are planning to do another presentation at Ryerson

Western and Maritimes

• Discussions needed.

Membership drive

• Membership drive (student and professional), engagement with current members (see above section for current actions)
• ACTION: Board members to brainstorm before next meeting to determine methods and venues for increasing membership for 2018.

2018 Fall Technical Conference

• Is this still feasible to plan over the summer?
• We have templates from the last ones in Montreal and Kingston, and lots of experience after the 2017 International
• It’s a great representation for the Canada Chapter.
• Importance of mentoring / training for future generation of mass properties.
• Look at training program vs papers and presentations
• Discussion deferred to June 2018 meeting.

Social gatherings

• Hold in Toronto and Montreal for outreach to current, past and future members.
• Look at as a priority in advance of the technical conference to engage new members in each area.
• Additive manufacturing companies
• tour of potential suppliers as a suggestion of an event.
• Identify needs within companies for training to target properly to show value of SAWE.

Training in Canada

• Andy may have some ideas for what we could do as a chapter for training our members and use as a recruiting tool.
• ACTION: Stuart to contact Andy

 

SAWE International Business

2018 International Conference – Texas

• Conference held May 5-10 in Irving, TX.
• Report from Robert, Whidy, Rod and Nicolas

 

Upcoming International Conferences

2019 – Virginia

2020 – Hamburg, Germany

2021 – TBD

 

Next Meetings for 2018:

June 13

July 11

August 8

September 12