AFOA Chairman: quarterly update
Online discussion forum launched; AFOA 2019 venue confirmed as Gatwick Hilton; Rosenbauer announced as main sponsor of AFOA 2019; AFOA and the ARFF Working Group work on a Memorandum of Understanding.
I am delighted to announce that the new discussion forum for the AFOA website is now live. This is something that we have been working towards for some time, as we believe that it is important to give our members a secure area for open discussion on any topic. The forum can be found here: www.afoa.co.uk/forum/afoa-members-forum
It has been hard work to get to this point, and now it is over to you, our members. We urge you to make use of the forum and use it as another means of developing solutions for your service. As is the case with many issues, it is almost certain that someone has faced it before, and we hope the forum will encourage the sharing of advice, experience, and ideas to help resolve current and future issues for our members.
Our annual conference continues to go from strength to strength, with the 2018 Airport Fire Officers Association conference seeing yet another year of expansion. The committee has been steadily pushing the capacity allocation for the Gatwick Hilton, and this year we were delighted that we booked and filled 240 rooms – and much faster than ever before. Rest assured, the association is in good shape.
The London Gatwick Hilton has been booked for the 2019 conference, to take place on 15-17 January 2019. While the hotel is undergoing major refurbishment work over the next three years – and the committee has been preparing the conference for a change of location – the team at Gatwick Hilton have assured us that our 2019 conference will be as successful as the last three events. The venue change is now planned for 2020.
We can also reveal that Rosenbauer UK will be the main sponsor for 2019. John Purdy and I recently met with MD Oliver North, who is delighted to be supporting the conference once more. Planning for 2019 is already well underway, and we have speakers lined up to cover the Dubai-Emirates B777 incident. This resulted in the tragic death of a member of the airport’s fire and rescue service. The impact was felt worldwide and the learnings will be critical to every ARFF service.
AFOA has also been working with the ARFF Working Group to develop a Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations. We envision that a trusted partnership could help to improve future shared learnings, and speakers and case study information are definitely areas where such an agreement would greatly benefit our association.
In the meantime, the next big calendar event for the association is our AGM on 19 September 2018. This is now firmly embedded as a fixture at the Emergency Services Show at the NEC in Birmingham, UK, and attendance has steadily increased as a result. As with the website forum, there is an audience participation element to the AGM – the more input we have from the AFOA membership, the better the outputs for all of us. So please do attend if you can. I look forward to seeing you in September.
Simon Petts, AFOA Chairman.
