In April 2007 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) decided that the Commonwealth will take full responsibility for the national trade measurement system. The transition of responsibilities from the States will occur over three years with Commonwealth administration commencing on 1 July 2010.

The National Measurement Institute, a Division of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, is in the process of developing the administrative arrangements and legislation for the national system and has produced a discussion paper on the intended legislation.

At a meeting on 18th September, 2007 the Queensland members discussed presenting the 2009 bi-annual conference accepted the challenge. Those present were Brian Phillips, Maxwell Purss, Rai Pippia, Barry Neville, Geoffrey Barnier, Shane Brann and Bob Irwin. One other member, Kim Irving, has also agreed to assist with the organization of the event.

A title has been suggested, “More Than Kilograms and Metres”; designed to expand the range of subject papers submitted and the proposed location was on the beautiful Queensland Sunshine Coast at Marcoola Beach.

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Geometrical Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) courses

Two GD&T course are being run by the CMM Users Group of the MSA. Full details are given in this brochure.

GD&T is a sophisticated international drawing language that, when correctly interpreted, allows precise descriptions of the functional requirements and often the use of significant larger tolerances, that leads to lower costs and better quality. Understanding the new tolerancing is essential for designers, manufacturers and metrologists.

For these workshops, the MSA has been fortunate to engage the services of Mr Georg Henzhold who is an international expert on GD&T. He is involved in ISO, DIN, CEN committees dealing with standardisation of GD&T. He has an industry background and has presented GD&T courses around the world since 1994. He is the author of “Geometrical Dimensioning and Tolerancing for Design, Manufacturing and Inspection”.

The MSA, with sponsorship from the National Measurement Institute, has kept fees for these courses well below market rates. This is a rare opportunity for industry. Numbers are limited so please register early using this form.

The Australian Metrologist (TAM) has served a crucial function of gathering and disseminating information of interest to the metrology community in Australia over the past 10 years. This function is one of the pivotal goals of the MSA and as such the magazine has contributed to the cohesion the Australian metrology community. We are examining ways of maintaining the effectiveness of this function and we will be reviewing many of the aspects related to production and distribution of TAM over the next year. To make way for the review, we will need to reduce the number of issues published in 2008 with the first issue to be scheduled for publication in mid-year.

We welcome your comments and insight into strategies that we could use to continue to communicate with the broader community and with each other as we meet the exciting challenges of the measurement world. If you wish you may send your comments to the secretary.

Our eNewsletter will keep you informed of the review progress.

Daniel Burke,
President, MSA.