Dear EFEE members, the President´s voice It is the New Year 2018, which means a lot of new beginnings and some old ones, which still needs to be worked on. Doing something better certainly should feature on our list – of New Year resolutions. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my best New Year wishes to all of you – our National Associations, Corporate members, Individual members, Honorary members as well as to our so far two Student members, to have a good and successful year 2018.
In this year our federation is going to have some very important and challenging events, so please let me briefly describe and summarize those events for you. We are really very happy that since the beginning of August 2016, when we noted very good news from Sweden and our application for PECCS project application (Pan-European Competency Certificate for Shotfirers/ Blast designers by European Federation of Explosives Engineers) was approved for funding, the project moves steadily ahead as scheduled. The project has 8 partners: Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Germany, United Kingdom, Romania and France. An official website of this project, www.shotfirer.eu, was also created, this is where you can find out all the relevant and important details. At the same time we have written a letter to all National Associations, about the PECCS project regarding the future of the explosives shotfirer certifications in the European Union, in the hope of their support. The outcomes of this project are: learning materials with examining questions, exercises, a course based on these materials and an online learning program which will be available on the internet for free on www.shotfirer.eu.
The PECCS project will complete a course with training means, which consists of about 1000 text sheets, pictures and drawings, exercises and an exam. The first test course for this materials already took place in Stockholm, Sweden, with the help from the PECCS contractor (BEF) between 11th -15th of December 2017.
The next test courses will be organized in France, Paris (23rd – 27th April, 2018) and in Germany, Dresden, (10-14th Sept, 2018). For authorities, who are issuing blasting certificates in Europe today and for the teachers/instructors, who are training blasters today, there will be no attendance fee for the test courses. All participants will receive a certificate of attendance. For registration to any of our test courses, or for more information, please visit project website www.shofirer.eu or contact us over the following email, info@shotfirer.eu
The autumn Council meeting for EFEE will take place on 7th and 8th September in Dresden, Germany to celebrate and commemorate the 30 years of EFEE. The reason to choose Germany for hosting this very important event for our federation is quite simple. EFEE was founded on 20th October 1988 in Aachen, Germany. Five nations were represented at this day for founding EFEE: Finland (Raimo Vuolio), the Netherlands (Henk Grünfeld and Joep Peeters), Switzerland (Didier Fardel and Hans Gysin), UK (Ken Broadhurst and Mike Groves) and Germany with nearly the complete board of the German association. After long discussions regarding the English name of the organization, with suggestions as “European Explosives Engineering Institute”, the name was finally decided to be the present name “European Federation of Explosives Engineers” (EFEE). Besides the regular EFEE Board meetings, Council meetings and Annual General Meeting scheduled for this year, our federation participates also on meetings of Notified Bodies for Explosives as well as on meetings of Explosives Working Group. EFEE is regularly represented on both types of meetings by Jörg Rennert who makes a great work for our federation. I´m very delighted to introduce you the first issue of EFEE Newsletter in this year. Please do not finish reading our Newsletter with my foreword but kindly continue to read – all the interesting articles are prepared especially for you in this Newsletter.
Igor Kopal, President of EFEE