BCAS: Going from strength to strength
July 01st 2010 The British Compressed Air Society (BCAS) is a unique organisation dedicated to providing technical support, training and general assistance to the compressed air and vacuum industry throughout the UK and sometimes into Europe and beyond.
In recent years, we have succeeded in creating a modern society that is responsive to the requirements of its membership. As we now enter our 80th year of operation, we continue to provide the level of service and information that the membership requires and we are continually trying to react to member requests for certain activities and initiatives which they feel will be beneficial to their particular business.
As I mentioned last year in the foreword for AirUser, being a member of a trade association in challenging times has enormous benefits both from the facilities that can be provided and the technical or legislative advice that can be sourced from one dedicated organisation. Many of our members have experienced tough times recently with hard decisions having to be made but hopefully the indicators are looking more positive and some improvement in business levels for the first six months of 2010 are encouraging.
For 2009/2010, we set down a series of targeted objectives. Given the period of activity that we were all facing, we wanted to consolidate the Society’s position and adopted the ‘Three Rs’ as a campaign. We are please to report that the Society has met it’s objectives for this period. On Recruitment, we continue to expand our membership in all categories.
On Retention, we aimed to retain as many existing members as possible which has been achieved and finally on Revenue we have managed to increase the overall revenue stream into the Society. From an overall perspective, we therefore continue to make progress and now look forward to 2010/2011 and beyond with a very positive view.
We continue to offer the industry our business support and insurance schemes which have proved to be very popular plus we have also updated our Articles of Association to bring us in line with current Company Act 2006 legislation. Also, our AirSAFE Register scheme has been introduced as the next stage of development in our customer relations programme as we would like to see as much on-site supply and service work as possible being carried out by BCAS members.
In now looking forward, 2010 is a very notable year for BCAS itself and for our membership as we celebrate our 80th Anniversary. The Society was originally formed in 1930 and a number of the original members are still with us today (perhaps under a different name or ownership) which is a testament to the support that our organisation has received over this period of time.
The list of changes over the period is endless. We now operate a fully inclusive organisation covering all products sectors for our industry and with the membership being extended over time to the present day position to include manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, end users plus also individuals and some members from overseas, all of which see the benefit of being members of our organisation.
Later this year will see the next change in President for the Society when Colin Mander from Gardner Denver / CompAir will take over the position and we will again create a theme for his period of office based on further developments of the AirSAFE Register programme and focussing the industry on the supply and use of original manufacturers spare parts to ensure long term equipment performance and reliability.
Finally, our continued support of AirUser, which is now into its 14th issue, demonstrates our commitment to support this publication. It provides the manufacturing industry with a journal that helps to keep industry up to date with available products and services and to help maximise the energy efficiency and performance of any compressed air or vacuum system installed within your respective businesses. More articles from British Compressed Air Society (BCAS): | 
