Published: 15 May 2015
The SLG (Survey Liaison Group) met last week at the offices of the RICS for its regular six monthly meeting. The meeting opened with the Chairman, Graham Mills, expressing his sadness at the recent death of Ken Hall. All present echoed his comments and talked in glowing terms of Ken’s involvement with the group in the past.
Most of the discussion on the day surrounded the forthcoming Geo Business Show in London. The SLG was a major driver in pulling the show together in 2014 and remains one of the primary movers for the show in 2015. With just two weeks to go, the show is again looking like a real winner and a superb advert for the UK surveying market. Over twenty countries are represented in the 177 exhibitors list that have already booked and there are no stands left now despite almost doubling the floor space from last year. Pre-registered attendee figures are up from last year and the conference bookings are going well too. In addition to the conference, there is a total of 143 workshops going on so anyone attending will have a very full day. The gala dinner is almost sold out too.
One area of co-operation within the SLG has always been the cross endorsement of guidance notes and information guides produced by the members of the group. As an experiment it has been agreed to try to form a joint mapping panel to produce a document which will be promoted as an SLG note. The first one is on the subject of Monitoring and the panel will consist initially of two members from each of TSA, RICS and ICES. This panel will not replace the work that is already carried out by the three parties on behalf of their own members but will hopefully demonstrate the active cooperation that is now in place in the UK.
A discussion also took place on the question of apprenticeships following Richard Maltby’s presentation at the TSA AGM. It will be interesting to see if the new government will make it easier for these schemes to be established and how it will affect the UK’s survey industry. An update on The Survey School was given which is currently going from strength to strength and totally vindicates TSA’s decision to take over the running of it.
Further updates were given on the status of the Survey4BIM group, the progress of the ICES’s drive towards Chartered Engineer, Incorporated Engineer and EngTech and the current position in regard to the UDMG.
All in all a productive three hours well spent in excellent company. The next meeting will be held in November of this year.
