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Fire Safety Award 2005

60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 'FORMATION' OF THE FIRE SURVEYORS SOCIETY Ian Wilson - Fire Surveyors Society (FSS) Chairman - for ABE Fire Safety Engineering Group The Annual Dinner for FSS held on 19 May 2006 at the Cricketers Club in London proved to be a celebration of so many happy coincidences. Our Guest of Honour was ABE President David B Smith, installed the previous week in some splendour at the Guildhall in Northampton. David is the first of the FSS Membership within the ABE to become ABE President. A special edition Dinner Card celebrated the long linkage between the ABE and the FSS, plus provided some of the historical data of that relationship. A relationship that 'dear Uncle Adolf' delayed from being implemented in 1938 when FSS was first formed - what a threat to bad practice FSS must have been! Our announced private and official guests were given a warm reception: ABE Past President Dennis James, 'Mr ABE', Bill Black, and ABE Chief Executive David Gibson. A past ABE Vice-President Pat Carey - who has given FSS so much support over the years - could not be with us as he was in the Middle East on fire business. As the FSS Chairman's ability to tell 'jokes' is now legendary - an attempted change of tack by singing a self-penned 'Fire Surveyor's Hymn' managed to leave the legend untarnished. The jokes were, as ever, very subtle and as always needed 'acquired joke deficiency syndrome' to appreciate the 'humour' to the full. The 'table time stakes' co-operative (based upon the length of the speeches) was somewhat thrown into confusion when the FSS Chairman stated that the time included announcing the winners of the ABE Fire Safety Award. But not before the reply by David B Smith, society's year by FSS Secretary Gordon Baker and the reply for the guests were concluded in a timely fashion. ABE Fire Safety Award (subhead) There were six past winners of the ABE Fire Safety Award present at the Dinner: Dr Gordon Cooke, Professor Kuldeep Virdi, Dr Howard Morgan, Colin Todd, John Northey, and David B Smith. The winner of the ABE Fire Safety Award was announced as David Simmonds of Surefire Systems Ltd for developing their Water-Mist System (Scotchmist) to a standard sufficient to accord to the requirements of the LUL Standard to provide automatic fire suppression on escalators. David was presented with his Winners Certificate and an inscribed ABE decanter by the ABE President. A 'Highly Commended Award' was received by Ian Gough on behalf of Bill Jackson, who as Property Director of the National Library of Scotland has made sure that a major refurbishment programme has incorporated full risk protection in accordance with 'risk based assessment'. Ian Gough accepted responsibility to arrange for an official presentation to be undertaken at a venue in the Scotland Region. Congratulations go to both David and Bill.

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