18(Houston/Sec.)10
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE NO.18 ： ELECTRICAL INSTALLATIONS
OF SHIPS AND OF MOBILE AND FIXED OFFSHORE UNITS
Plenary Meeting - Houston 1998
Agenda item 10.1 - Reports and communications：
Report of the TC 18 Observer at IMO meetings and information on IMO relations.
1. It was agreed at the Plenary Meeting in Kista, agenda item No. 13, that Mr Per Martinsen of the Norway delegation would act as liaison between IEC TC18 and IMO and for convenience, since they are based close to IMO, that Mr Colin Porter, Chairman TC18 and Messrs. Michael Hunter and Brian Sharman of the British delegation would attend any necessary meetings in London. It was also agreed that Mr Colin Porter, Chairman TC18 would also arrange to meet with the IMO secretariat in order to present IEC TC 18's credentials.
2. Subsequent to the above it was further agreed between the elected parties that, in order to acquaint themselves with the workings of IMO since neither has attended before, arrangements would be made for Messrs Porter and Sharman to attend the next available meeting, which was an MSC (Maritime Safety Committee) meeting in December 1996.
3. Arrangements were made and Messrs. Porter and Sharman attended on various days. Difficulties were experienced obtaining the necessary IMO meeting documents, which were essential in order to understand the proceedings, through the official IMO/IEC channel. Whilst many of these documents were made available at IMO on the day, in order to make constructive contributions to the meeting a previous sighting and/or study of the documents is essential. This matter was being addressed by Colin Porter through the secretary of TC18 but to date the situation is unchanged.
4. Whilst the proceedings of IMO initially appeared confusing it soon became very apparent that in order for IEC TC18 to have any influence of the decisions made an early involvement was required and, if considered necessary, an information paper submitted for the consideration of the delegates, although there is no guarantee of their acceptance. It was apparent that once a decision has been made within the working groups, many of which only took two days to complete their work, it was impossible to change. An example of this was the interlocking arrangements of oil tanker cargo pump room lighting with the ventilation system which was approved by this meeting.
5. The next meeting attended was the DE (Design and Equipment) 40 meeting from 10th to 14th February 1997. This was attended all week by Brian Sharman since Colin Porter has previous engagements and Michael Hunter was part of the UK govemment delegation. Also in attendance as part of the Dutch government delegation was Mr Paul Kunst of the Netherlands IEC TC18 delegation at Kista.
