Welcome to 2025 and to our new look newsletter. I very much hope that you will like it.
2024 was a pivotal year for ISCO. First of all we celebrated our 40 years in existence providing insight and advice to the world of spill response. It was also the year of significant transformation of ISCO. After the passing of our founder and legal owner, David Usher, some might have wondered whether ISCO would survive. However all of us associated closely with ISCO were determined that the work of the organisation should continue and that we would still be providing our services forty years hence. But changes were needed and change is what we did.
ISCO was re-incorporated as a genuine not-for-profit, registered in the UK. We set up a truly international Board of Directors to ensure proper governance of the organisation. The ISCO Council was was born with the responsibility for setting and enacting the strategies meet our overarching objective, which you will be pleased to learn has not changed. The ISCO Council reflects our global reach and has brought new blood into the organisation from the worlds of salvage and commercial and oil industry owned OSROs.
Looking ahead to 2025 we have put some exciting new strategies in place. Three in particular are:
• we are enhancing ISCO’s communications. The website continues to be updated and you can view the new format newsletter in front of you.
• we have upgraded the membership application and renewal process and introduced an electronic membership card. The development of an electronic membership card will allow us to provide additional commercial benefits to our members.
• we are developing and building a student programme leveraging the academic connections that the council and our members already have. We believe this will help improve the age demographic of our industry and develop a steady stream of new talent for hire.
These are not our only initiatives and you will be hearing more about some of the others as we progress through the year.
I am very much looking forward to working with the ISCO team and with our members as we move forward.
For those of you attending Interspill in London in April please come and see us on our stand and we will be delighted to chat to you face to face.
Wishing you all the best for the coming year.
