News

The course content was designed for experienced Technical Committee (TC) members within EURAMET who have already been involved in the CIPM MRA and its processes. The course provided participants with an understanding of the importance of metrology in the global quality infrastructure and information on the important mechanisms of the CIPM MRA. It also provided participants with specific guidelines for comparisons and calibration and measurement capabilities (CMCs) in different technical areas and regional requirements of EURAMET on the operation of the CIPM MRA. Lecturers, including experts from EURAMET and BIPM staff members, shared their experience and gave personal perspectives on a range of topics.

Dr Graham Machin, from NPL (UK) and chair of EURAMET's TC for Thermometry, shared his personal experience on how to lead and organise committees to facilitate effective progress for the whole community, and how to identify and develop leaders through the TC. Graham noted that being a TC-Chair is a very responsible position and requires representation of an entire region's measurement specialists in a particular field. Participants greatly appreciated information about TC management, which is a difficult task, carried out voluntarily. With respect to this, Haris Memić, from IMBiH (Bosnia & Herzegovina), stated in his feedback that "Even if we already knew a lot about activities covered by EURAMET it was very useful to hear about the amount of work and time which has to be spent on chairing the Technical Committees, but on the other side also the enthusiasm which is needed to be efficient and effective to recruit other people by making and keeping them interested".

Steffen Rudtsch, from PTB (Germany), commented that "There were a lot of interesting solutions, worth adopting in other fields". This highlighted that although the course was aimed at TC-Chairs, some of the ideas and concepts presented will filter through to the Consultative Committees of CIPM to improve the effectiveness of their existing processes.

Participants also gained practical experience through group working sessions reflecting the content of the lectures. The first practical session was related to comparisons. Participants examined different questions and examples for the calculation of key comparison reference values and degrees of equivalence between national standards. In another practical session, participants reviewed real CMCs and drafted comments regarding the supporting technical evidence, quality assurances and formatting of the CMC spreadsheets. This session gave all participants 'hands-on' experience of how metrologists around the world can work together with the aim of ensuring the reliability of CMCs published in the BIPM key comparison database.