Nordic Ergonomics Network

IEA Newsletter from the IEA President
No. 15 – September 2007

Dear Council Members,

I am delighted to provide our September Newsletter to members of the IEA Federated Societies.

1. IEA Boston Council meeting - Minutes
By now all IEA Council members should have received a copy of the Minutes of the Council meeting from the Secretary General, Pascale Carayon. These minutes have been presented in a style to enable you to extract a summary of the key decisions for you to include in your Society newsletters. All of the reports are provided as Appendices to simplify the minutes to the key issues debated.
Please review the minutes and provide any suggested amendments to Pascale by the 27th October (carayon@engr.wisc.edu). If no amendments are received then the minutes are deemed to have been passed.

2. IEA Council – 2008 – Reykjavik, Iceland
The IEA Council voted to accept the invitation from the Nordic Ergonomics Society to hold our 2008 Council meeting from August 9-10, 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland. This will be followed by the 40th Anniversary conference for NES. Please mark this in your diary now The theme for the NES Conference will be “Ergonomics is a lifestyle”.
Consider coming to Iceland and contributing to this debate.

3. IEA Healthcare Systems Ergonomics and Patient Safety Conference 2008
The planning for the Second IEA conference on Healthcare Systems Ergonomics and Patient Safety (HEPS) is now well underway. Please visit the conference website - http://www.heps2008.org/. Consistent with our goal of strategic partnership we are approaching external organizations with related interests with Healthcare systems and Patient Safety.
If you have an organization in your country that we should approach to be involved in the HEPS conference or trade display please inform us. We can jointly promote ergonomics and the HEPS conference.

4. Certification of Ergonomists
During the last year we were delighted to approve an application from the Japan Ergonomics Society for IEA endorsement of their Certification program. We have now received an application from New Zealand for endorsement. Thanks to the Professional Standards and Education Committee led by Tom Smith for their time in reviewing these applications.

We are currently working on a definition of a Certified Ergonomist for inclusion on the IEA website. We would appreciate your comments before a decision is made.

A certified ergonomist is an individual whose professional training and practice are concerned with the analysis of human-system interaction and with the design of this interaction in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance. They are required to comply with the IEA Code of Conduct (http://www.iea.cc/browse.php?contID=edu_codeconduct) and meet the competencies summarized in the IEA website (http://www.iea.cc/browse.php?contID=edu_competencies).'

Any comments from IEA Council members would be most welcome. We are also seeking comments from the endorsed certification agencies.

5. Agriculture Ergonomics Conference – AEDEC 2007
The IEA Conference on ergonomics in agriculture is to be hosted in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia from the 27th to the 29th November 2007. We are grateful to the assistance of Damai Services Sdn Bhd and Halimahtun Khalid for their support in making the arrangements. This conference has received support from ILO, ICOH as well as the IEA to assist a large group from developing countries. As this stage, we are supporting 13 delegates from Indonesia as one group of attendees. We have many delegates from other countries that have had papers accepted and their support is being arranged. More information on this conference is located at http://www.aedec2007.org

6. 2nd Symposium ATWAD: Activity2008 - Activity analyses for developing work.
The second symposium for this important conference will be held in Helsinki, Finland from the 12th – 14th May 2008. More information can be found on the website of the symposium at http://www.ttl.fi/activity2008. We are pleased to recognize the leadership provided by Pascal Beguin from CNAM, France, and chair of the IEA Technical Committee on Activity Theories for Work Analysis and Design, for this conference.


We look forward to providing further IEA activity information in the next Newsletter during October 2007.


Yours sincerely,

Prof. David C Caple
IEA President