SIM INTERAMERICAN METROLOGY SYSTEM
SIM Council Meeting
Washington, 10th March 2001

DRAFT MINUTES

Attendance list
Felipe Urresta, SIM President (INEN)
Oscar Harasic, SIM Executive Secretary (OAS)
B. Stephen Carpenter, Chairman, Technical Committee (NIST)
Yoshito Mitani, Chairman, Professional Development Committee (CENAM)
Roosevelt DaCosta, CARIMET, Coordinator (JBS)
Ismael Castelazo, NORAMET, Representative by delegation (CENAM), and SIM Representative to the JCRB
Luis Mussio, SURAMET, Coordinator (LATU)
Léa Contier de Freitas, SIM Secretary (INMETRO)

Observers:
João A. Herz da Jornada, SURAMET Representative to the Professional Development Committee (INMETRO)

Agenda
1. Introduction and welcome
2. Verification of quorum
3. Approval of the agenda
4. Approval of previous meeting minutes
5. Report from the SIM President
6. Report from the Technical Advisor and Technical Committee Chairman
7. Report from the Professional Development Committee Chairman
8. Report from the SIM Representative to the JCRB
9. Work plan and budget for 2001
10. Report from the IDB meeting
11. Future activities
12. Other business: 2002 General Assembly
13. Next meeting

1. Introduction and welcome
Felipe Urresta thanked NIST for arranging the facilities for the meeting and welcomed Council members and invited observer. He also conveyed NIST congratulations for their centenary and for the excellent scientific work and metrology development carried out over so many decades. He thanked NIST especially for the large contribution to SIM.
Armando Mariante Carvalho, SIM Past President (INMETRO), sent his apologies for not being present.
The SIM Council meeting workbook (thereafter referred to as workbook) was distributed to all council members.

2. Verification of quorum
The quorum was verified to exist, seven out of ten Council members being present. The original signed presence list was filed at SIM Secretariat.

3. Approval of the Agenda
The agenda was approved with amendments and it is shown, in its amended version, on the first page of these minutes.

4. Approval of previous meeting minutes
The minutes of the meeting held in São Paulo, on 8th December 2000, which had been distributed to the Council by e-mail in February 2001, were approved with minor amendments that were fed directly into the final text (page 10, date of GA 2001, 23rd to 27th September 2001, in Miami). Roosevelt DaCosta amended a few sentences of his speech.
Roosevelt daCosata suggested that matters arising from the minutes should be included as a formal agenda item from the next meeting onwards.

Matters arising from the minutes:
As far as the draft resolution proposed during the last meeting was concerned, the Council discussed the matter extensively and decided to adopt it with the following text:
Resolution 01/2001
It is critical to use the OAS funds provided for SIM towards building up the Metrology infrastructure, especially in developing countries of SIM. These include offerings of training courses and workshops, and performance of pilot studies to assess metrology capabilities of NMIs. Funds should also be used to encourage these countries to participate in key and supplementary comparisons.

5. Report from the SIM President
Felipe Urresta told the meeting that he had written to the new president of INTI, Argentina, and had informed that he would appreciate it if he could be invited to the next meeting of the Strategic Association of the Industrial Technology Institutes of Mercosur in order to exchange views with those metrology institutes of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Steve Carpenter and Oscar Harasic expressed their willingness to attend the same meeting. Léa Contier de Freitas, pro tempore secretary of the said Association would inform them of the next meeting date. He also told the meeting that he had written to the PTB, Germany, inviting them to coordinate their technical cooperation to SIM with the Professional Development Committee, in the case of training courses, and with the relevant SIM Metrology WGs and Technical Committee, in the case of comparisons. He stressed the importance of PTB's interaction with SIM. Both letters had been included in the meeting's workbook and form Appendix 1.

Roosevelt DaCosta reported that, concerning the comparison for volume between CARIMET and CAMET, PTB had informed that they would be interested if Jamaica were to be the pilot country. Both regions agreed previously on a closer cooperation and decided to start that with the volumetric comparison (20 L and 100 cc). PTB would provide the artifacts, expertise guidance for the planning by the regions and support the discussion meetings. Steve Carpenter reminded that a volume comparison had been already planned for 2001 and it would be important to define responsibilities. He continued to say that a link with EUROMET was highly desirable and that PTB should take part in the comparison, taking the technical responsibility for their ring of comparison. Ismael Castelazo suggested that PTB should coordinate with the organizers of the SIM volume comparison so that resources could be optimized.

6. Report from the Technical Advisor and Technical Committee Chairman
Steve Carpenter reported that the Chair of the SIM MWG on Mass and related quantities attended a EUROMET meeting on mass metrology. He also reported that the SIM MWG on Flow and Volume held a meeting in CENAM, and that two representatives, from CENAM and NIST, would be attending the CIPM Consultative Committee meeting in Istambul.
He told the meeting that the SIM MGW on Chemical Metrology met during the last PITTCON Conference, held in New Orleans, on 5nd March 2001.

7. Report from the Professional Development Committee Chairman
Yoshito Mitani informed the meeting that a report had already been submitted as part of the workbook, forming now Appendix 2.
He emphasized that the training program could not be carried out completely and that it had been difficult to have the PDC members meeting together. The last meeting was held in December, in Brazil, when regional needs were discussed.
The issue was raised that course fees had been charged from SIM participants during the gas metrology course held during the Metrologia 2000 Congress, in São Paulo, Brazil, and that such charges should not be allowed when courses had the support of SIM funds. Steve Carpenter informed that Vera Ponçano, the course's coordinator, was preparing a full report on the course that would include an explanation on why the charges, in that exceptional case, had been made. The Council decided to wait for the report.
It was announced that the seminar on dimensional metrology seminar was postponed.
João A. Herz da Jornada told the meeting about the program proposed by INMETRO to the Ministry of Education so that metrology topics could included in the program of undergraduate courses (exact sciences, human sciences and medical related fields). He would forward the summary of the program to the Secretary for inclusion in the minutes as Appendix 3.

8. Report from the SIM Representative to the JCRB
Ismael Castelazo summarized the 6th meeting of the JCRB held from 8th to 9th March, at NIST, which was attended by the following regions: APMP, COOMET, EUROMET, MENAMET, SADCMET and SIM. The written report forms Appendix 4. The main points discussed and/or informed were the following:
a. the CMCs for mass and electricity were already posted on the BIPM web page, after an extensive evaluation work;
b. the amount of work involved in the evaluation of the data to be fed in the BIPM database and the discussions raised were making the separation difficult of the work of the CIPM Consultative Committees and that of the Technical Groups that were reviewing the Calibration and Measurement Capabilities (CMCs);
c. as a consequence of those first evaluation exercises, the BIPM decided to make recommendations on format of tables and data, and on how to express uncertainties; such instructions should be forwarded to SIM countries;
d. a new e-mail address for JCRB matters (tquinn.jcrb@bipm.org) and a reserved, password protected part of the BIPM web page for the JCRB representatives were created;
e. since there were NMIs that participated in two regional metrology organizations (RMOs), they should choose and declare through which RMO they were submitting their data;
f. APMP reported that they set up a new committee dealing with developing economies
g. EUROMET (www.euromet.org) reported that:
· they were reviewing guide 8;
· only nearly key comparison data were being accepted for review, to ensure reliability;
· a project (512), supported by the European Commission, addressed the CMCs from European NMIs and the quality requirements under the CIPM MRA. Workshops and meetings were being organized to discuss the implementation of ISO 17025 in NMIs, since that was compulsory for European NMIs. Representatives from other RMOs ere welcome to the events.
h. MENAMET informed that four countries were submitting their CMCs through other RMOs: France, South Africa, Turkey, and USA;
i. SADCMET announced their new associate members Egypt, Kenya and Uganda, making up a total of 17 members; and informed that quality systems were implemented by ccreditation in the whole region.

It was informed that NIST should be attending the SADCMET meeting in April and would be representing SIM.
The report presented by SIM to the JCRB (Annex I of Appendix 4), during the said meeting, summarized the SIM activities carried out, under the CIPM MRA framework, over the period from October 2000 to March 2001. They were related to the fields of:
· Acoustics, ultrasound and vibration,
· Photometry and Radiometry,
· Ionizing radiation,
· Gas mixtures,
· Mass and related quantities

9. Work plan and budget for 2001
Steve Carpenter presented the work plan for 2001 and the budget allocation and informed the meeting that the OAS agency changed the modality of support so that projects could run for three years. Therefore, the new SIM project would have to be submitted shortly as a continuation of the previous one, asking for a maximum of US$ 250,000. Support letters should be sent by 15th June, which meant that the process of asking for them would need to start soon.
He also informed that the final report had already been submitted and that the remaining funds, of the order of US$ 10,000, were allowed to be used to buy an artifact for the volume comparison. Part of the remaining funds was also used for reserving booth space for SIM at the NCSL Conference that would be held at the end of July, in Washington.
It was agreed that Oscar Harasic would take care of the logistic aspects concerning the organization of the booth, while the Secretariat at INMETRO would design the banners. The SIM brochure and the InfoSIM should be printed for distribution.

10. Report from the SIM Past President in connection with the IDB funds
Oscar Harasic reported on the meeting held with Juan Manuel Corredor, Chief of the Regional Technical Cooperation Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which was also attended by Roosevelt DaCosta, CARIMET Coordinator, and Angelo Menezes, from INMETRO and representing the former SIM President. An aide memoir of the meeting forms Appendix 5.
Roosevelt DaCosta told the meeting that it was instructive to listen to the IDB's view. The bank's opinion was that most countries were not ready yet for standards driven trade. Since the IDB was one of the main organizations supporting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), they would like to see countries come to the point of recognizing their responsibility and take steps towards commitment in that direction. They would like to see countries use other resources that the IDB could offer in order to take steps towards standards driven trade. When holding different events, SIM could help countries to have the details on the different support funds from the IDB or, even better, to have IDB representatives coming to them.
Since the project SIM had to be resubmitted to IDB, an informal meeting had been held over two days previous to the Council meeting so it could be rediscussed and redesigned according to the suggestions received. In order to increase the probability and degree of approval, the project should receive official support from the different SIM members in the form of a letter addressed to Dr. Juan Manuel Corredor.
It was agreed that as soon as the new version of the project were ready Léa Contier de Freitas would circulate it.

11/12. Planning of activities by region, discussed together with and Future activities
Yoshito Mitani reported that CAMET had requested a regional seminar to promote metrology awareness combined with a PDC training course.
Steve Carpenter and Oscar Harasic reported that there was a request from the Ministry of Economy from Nicaragua for a visit of a SIM delegation to meet with government officials, laboratories, industry and universities to discuss the importance of metrology. Léa Contier de Freitas infomed that Nicaragua had also requested assistance to Brazil, so that they could redesign their legal metrology system and discuss the possibility of laboratory accreditation. The Council approved a SIM delegation to be sent for visits on 26th and 27th March: Steve Carpenter (NIST), Salvador Echeverría (CENAM) and , João A. Herz da Jornada (INMETRO).
Felipe Urresta and Yoshito Mitani informed that the sub-regional coordinators meeting and the sub-regional SIM seminar for decision makers of ANDIMET would be held in May.
Roosevelt DaCosta reported that CARIMET would be holding a volume comparison sponsored by PTB.
He also reported that a regional organization for coordinating standards, metrology and conformity assessment systems at the CARICOM level was created and named Caribbean Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ). He emphasized that, since all the countries of the region addressed seriously the issue of becoming standards driven trade countries, it was necessary to put forward to policy makers in government and private sectors what that entailed in terms of investment in metrology. CROSQ was an opportunity for the Caribbean countries to have metrology addressed formal way.
He also told the meeting that a CARIMET seminar for promoting awareness of metrology, standards and conformity assessment was planned for late March, in Trinidad and Tobago.
Luis Mussio reported that Argentina had proposed to hold the 2002 SIM General Assembly in Buenos Aires.

13. Other business
The proposal from Argentina was discussed briefly. The Council decided to wait for an official communication from INTI before it could submit the proposal to the General Assembly for consideration.
The redesign and maintenance of the SIM webpage was discussed. The page would be transferred from the Brazilian server IPBPINet to the OAS server and maintained by the SIM Secretariat at INMETRO. However, that meant that the SIM Secretariat would needed to either hire the service of a webmaster or have Josefa Paredes Villalobos to attend a webmaster course. Since the latter option would enable changes and updating to be done quickly, the Council agreed that SIM funds could be used for paying a webmaster course for Ms. Villalobos.

14. Next Council meeting
The Council agreed that the next meeting should be held in Washington, USA, during the NCSL Annual Conference, which would take place from 30th July to 1st August.
The Council also agreed that the next General Assembly would be held during the week from 23nd to 27th September 2001, in Miami, and that a one-day seminar would focus on the importance of metrology to FTAA.