The Welding Institute Annual Dinner 2012

Celebrating the achievements of past, present and future engineers

In a change to tradition, The Welding Institute Annual Dinner and Awards Presentation Ceremony took place on the evening of 25 June 2012 in the historic setting of King’s College, Cambridge, not far from the Institute’s headquarters at Granta Park, Great Abington. Over the past thirty years, the event has been held in London.

Over 250 international guests from the fields of welding and engineering took their places in The Hall at King’s alongside their hosts as The Welding Institute President, John Baxter, and TWI Associate Director of Professional Affairs, Chris Eady, opened the evening’s ceremonies and introduced the 2012 Awards.

President, John Baxter, congratulated award winners in eleven categories:

• The Brooker Medal (donated by Johnson Matthey plc): Damian Kotecki
• Bevan Braithwaite Award for Enterprise: John Irven
• Leslie Lidstone Medal: Sayee Raghunathan
• Larke-Lillicrap Award: Norman McPherson
• Distinguished Service Award: Herbert Buckingham
• Honorary Fellowship: Bertil Pekkari
• Richard Dolby Rolls-Royce Prize: Stuart Campbell
• TWI Commendation Award: Darus Taib
• Richard Weck Award: Stephen Cater and Jon Perrett
• WJS Loyal Service Awards: Don Atkinson, Peter Brace, Martin Farthing, Alan Langford, Keith McFarland, Andrew Nowicki, Alan Penny, and John Weston
• SkillWeld 2012: Joe Cosgrove

The topic focus of hosts and guest speakers during the evening rested on the importance of inspiring, skilling and qualifying the next generation of engineers, technologists and technicians.

‘If we are going to deliver a future where we do indeed have clean, secure and affordable energy then we need to ensure we encourage and nurture the talent to help us get there.’

Following dinner, guest speaker Chris Murray of National Grid and Xoserve spoke of the recruitment challenge faced by a changing energy industry and stressed the need in this and many industries to get the right level and flow-through of talent with STEM skills – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – and to widen the pathways into work through apprenticeships, engineering training programmes and undergraduate placements.

Peter Hughes of Scottish Engineering supported this with humorous insight, and talk of his work to inspire schoolchildren into engineering. Peter brought the evening to a close with his engineering anecdotes and musical versatility.

The Welding Institute Awards are awarded by the Council of The Welding Institute on an annual basis. For a nomination form, please contact twiawards@twi.co.uk or visit the web site www.twiprofessional.com

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