Activities - 2008 - Report April 2007 to March 2008

This text is an abbreviated account, the full report was made available to the federated societies.

The main concern of the Executive this year has turned out to be the conversion of FEES from being an informal organization to a legal entity, eligible for entering partnerships with the EC (and other legally established bodies). The President initially investigated the requirements for doing so in the Netherlands but the process was predicted to be very costly. After briefly assessing the costs in other countries, Germany seemed to be the cheapest option. Martin Shütte offered to work with the President in arranging all the formalities and the outcome is the signing of the documents scheduled for this March Council meeting.

Apart from the above work “behind the scenes”, the Executive has met once, on 21 September 2007 in Hoofddorp. This meeting focused mainly on the legalization process (see above), information from the IEA Council meeting (where Ernst Koningsveld kindly represented FEES) and planes for the forthcoming European Month of Ergonomics (see below). FEES endorsed the HEPS 2008 scientific meeting on ergonomics in patient safety scheduled for July 2008.

The Communications and Promotions Committee has been re-formed during the year with Kristiina Juvas as Chair. The main activity over the last year has been the European Month of Ergonomics.

The EUTF has had a quieter year than 2006-07 when much effort was devoted to arranging the Brussels Workshops and following up the initiatives started in Maastricht. These initiatives have been pursued further this year with visits to the EU Agency for Safety and Health at Work (Bilbao) and arranging speakers for this Council meeting.

The Standards Committee has been formally set up, chaired by Martin Schütte. Through Martin, FEES participated in the CEN TC/122 meeting in Dublin. Martin Schütte together with Dietmar Gude (Webmaster) as also progressing the Impact Factor facility on the website.

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Page created 2008 by David O'Neill - last revision 23.09.2009 by Dietmar Gude