2019 Conference

“The Apprentices – I spent a lot of time talking to them. Having developed and run training I know hard it is to ‘teach’ people. They need to want to ‘learn’ - yours do!"

- John Haynes – Managing Director, Shock mitigation

"Congratulations on another great day . . . . . The guys from MEEMA told me they were really impressed!" 

- Rod Boreham – Managing Director, Advance yacht Systems Ltd

The British Marine Electrical & Electronic Association held one of their largest and most successful conferences at the Novotel Hotel in Southampton on

the 15th October. 

The Chairman, Derek Gilbert, opened the Conference by welcoming the speakers and special guests, including Lesley Robinson, CEO of British Marine; he also thanked the Event Sponsors, especially Victron Energy as Headline Sponsors of this year's event and welcomed a group of apprentices, invited to join the conference and to participate in a competition during the day. 

The general theme of the day was biased towards environmentally friendly technologies and training  support for apprentices  Delegates were treated to a wide range of subject matters including presentations from John Haynes of Shock Mitigation, introducing latest developments in Hybrid Power utilisation in marine vessels, Marine Electronic Interfacing and its future presented by Phil Whitehurst of Actisense and an 'Overview of Marine Electrical Apprenticeship Standards' presented by Ulrika Lawrence of British Marine Training. 

After lunch, Ross Wombwell, British Marine Technical Manager briefed the conference on updates to ISO standards relevant to the leisure marine market and the impact of Brexit on CE marked products. This was followed by James Scott-Anderson of British Marine Environment presenting environmental issues which need to be addressed by the leisure marine industry.  Ross completed the presentations with an update on 'The World Sailing launch challenge 2024'. 

The formal section of the Conference was followed by the Association's AGM – which then opened up to a round table discussion by all delegates identifying how best to promote the professionalism, qualification, training and the quality of BMEEA members specifically to boat owners. 

Concurrent with the main conference during the afternoon was an apprentice’s competition in which teams from RNLI, Sunseeker, Berthon Boats and Dolphin Marine completed an electrical technical task.  The eventual winning team, in a close-run competition, being Joshua Ross and Kian Cotterill-Clark of Berthon Boats.  Both Joshua and Kian received toolkits presented by Ian Lewis of Weidmuller as part of their award as well as receiving the trophy sponsored by Navico and presented by Lesley Robinson. 

The day was rounded off with presentations of awards for BMEEA's 'Product of the Year', the BMEEA's 'Dealer/Installer of the Year', the BMEEA 'Newly Certificated Electrical Technician of the Year' and BMEEA's 'Newly Certificated Electronic Technician of the Year.