Our History: 2018 - 2019

President's Message - August 2018

To All Members, Associates, Affiliates and out of country members

As some of you are aware the new ASHRAE SA Chapter was officially chartered on 27 July 2018.

In this regard you will see some associated tweets, Facebook blogs and magazine articles related to the charter ceremony and the formation of the Chapter which included the Society President, Sheila Hayter, Vice President Farooq Mehboob, Region At Large Chair Dr Ahmed Alaa along with other international dignitaries who officially handed over the gavel and charter to your new committee.

Attached is a list of the committee along with the chairs of the additional committee’s setup to date, with contact numbers and e-mail addresses. Our new chapter is only as strong and active as you our members and I would encourage you to communicate on the ASHRAE e-mail addresses your intent to volunteer to the chair of any of the relative committee as an active committee member. The committee’s in red are still looking for chairs and committee members so please feel free to volunteer for these positions as well to either myself or our secretary Russell Hattingh.

To fill you in on the committee activities to date, we have had extremely fruitful and successful meetings with:

• ECSA with the intent of becoming a Voluntary Association and having our technical courses accredited, our President Elect Olu Soluade is undertaking this important task,
• SAIRAC with the intent of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding covering a host of areas from training to the Fridgair Convention and membership reciprocity to mention a few,
• GBCSA with the intent of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding covering areas from training, to Conference involvement along with common committee involvement,
• CIDB with the intent of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding covering new Standard development and being more actively involved in the support of some of their current technical developments,
• SAIMechE and SAIEE with the intent of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding covering training and membership reciprocity,
• CESA with the intent of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding for bursaries, honours and industry related awards,
• We also met with numerous consulting practices and role players in our industry which gave us some insight into what we should be focusing our activities on this year,

We will keep you informed of these developments on our e-newsletter which we hope to have operational, along with our website, as quickly as possible.

A typical Society year runs from June through to June so based on our Charter date we are already one month behind and all our committee chairs are frantically in the process of setting up the year’s objectives for each committee which will be reviewed and approved at our first Committee meeting on 30 August 2018, following which these will be shared with all of you detailing our Chapter activities for the year which we hope you will support. We are national, so all technical courses and training events will have video conferencing to enable even our Botswana and Mauritius members to join in with us for these events.

We are volunteer based so will rely heavily on our members to once again get up, take action and get involved in our industry and allied fields to ensure that we have some sustainability in our youth, culture and business fields.

This, being our first year, will be busy as all the necessary structures are put in place but it will also be a productive year that will see the formation of some new technical committee’s which you will be notified about in due course. Importantly to remember, is that we are a non-profit organization and rely on funding from you our members and sponsorships to continue to offer our Chapter maximum output as long as we have funding coming in so will rely on your dedicated support at out Chapter Technical meetings along with your active feedback on chapter progress. Should you or your company wish to donate an Adhoc sponsorship please do not hesitate to contact myself or our secretary as these can also be at our technical meetings where you will be given the opportunity of some recognition. I would like to take the time to thank our sponsors to date:

• Platinum Sponsor - ISIB Turkish HVAC Exporters Association,
• Gold sponsor - Trane / Service First,
• Silver Sponsors
  • AOS Consulting,
  • Baltimore Aircoil,
  • Heating Centre
  • Ingenium Engineers
• Ad Hoc sponsors
  • Energy Partners
  • ASHRAE Region At Large

Our first Distinguished Lecturer is due to arrive shortly in October to give out first Technical Chapter meeting with Cape town taking the honours for the first historic Chapter Meeting, this coincides with the GBCSA Conference where he will also be taking part of a panel, with the SA Chapter and ASHRAE having a presence at the conference for the first time. However, I digress, and steal the thunder away from our Chapter and Technical training Committee Chair, Mrs. Pauline Prinsloo who will be looking after the Chapters technical aspects for our first year and notify you in due course of this first Chapter Meeting.

There is so much to do and so much that can be offered to you our members along with the built environment, so I would like to take this opportunity of asking all of you to sit up, take notice and once again note that it is time to get involved in the improvement of all the industries allied to our sciences and lastly, to network and take the time to meet your colleagues at the upcoming technical meetings.

Sincerely,

RO Humphrey
ASHRAE SA Chapter President
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Seminars

Several interesting seminars/webinars took place. Some are available as recordings at the links below. Others may be read in document form below.

• Resilient buildings
• Net Zero energy
• Atrium Buildings and Hot climates (missing sound for a part of this)

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Committee reporting

Grassroots Government Advocacy Committee AGM presentation 2019-06-10

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South Africa Chapter Chartered

From ASHRAE eSociety, September 2018 (Reproduced with permission)

Sheila Hayter, P.E., ASHRAE President, Fellow ASHRAE, chartered and inaugurated the South Africa chapter on July 27th in Johannesburg. Sheila was accompanied by Tim Wentz, P.E., Presidential Member; Farooq Mehboob, P.E., Vice President, Life Member ASHRAE; and Dr. Ahmed Alaa Eldin, DRC of Region-At-Large (RAL), Member ASHRAE, along with some leaders from RAL.

From left: Richie Mittal, Member ASHRAE; Mohammad Abbas Sajid, Member ASHRAE; Dr. Ahmed Alaa Eldin, Director & Regional Chair, ASHRAE Region-At-Large; Richard Humphrey, Chapter President; Russell Hattingh, Chapter Secretary; ASHRAE President Sheila Hayter; Pauline Prinsloo, Member ASHRAE; Jochie van der Merwe, Member ASHRAE; Farooq Mehboob, ASHRAE Vice President; and Dawie Kriel, Member ASHRAE.

Prior to the ceremony, the chapter Board of Governors with the leadership of Richard Humphrey (chapter president) and Olu Soluade (chapter president-elect) held a series of meetings with most of the associations related to industry and HVAC&R professionals such as:

• The South African Qualification and Certification Committee
• South African Building Standards
• Green Building Council of South Africa
• South African Institute of Mechanical Engineers
• South African Refrigerated Distribution Association
• The University of Pretoria
• Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Manufacturers and Suppliers Association
• The Mine Ventilation Society of South Africa
• Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority
• Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers

The chartering took place with Russell Hattingh, chapter secretary, serving as moderator. Following a presentation from Wentz, Zeki Poyraz representing ISIB, the platinum sponsor, spoke. Sheila installed the chapter after she and Dr. Alaa Eldin made remarks.  

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Awards

ASHRAE SA representatives accepting the Research Promotions Certificate for achievement of 2018-2019 targets.

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