As many IFRF Members will be aware, I am due to retire as Director of IFRF at end of September 2005. In the following article of this edition you will read that the IFRF is taking the opportunity to restructure and is seeking a new home as well as a new Director. This activity is proceeding in an encouraging manner, but will take some months to come to a successful completion. Therefore the IFRF Monitoring Council has accepted the proposal that Neil Fricker will take over as Interim Director of IFRF for the period October 2005 – March 2006 inclusive. Neil will work on a part-time basis with a strong emphasis upon the development of the new structure.

Neil is well known to the Foundation and its Members – He was an Investigator at the Research Station in the Seventh [Wolfgang Leuckel’s] team from 1968 to 1971. Following this, he worked in the Italian steel industry with CSM (Italian Flame Research Committee) before spending 25 years working on R&D with British Gas. He then became an independent consultant, ultimately continuing his co-operation with the IFRF as Editor-in-Chief of the IFRF Handbook, Technical Co-ordinator of the PowerFlam1 Consortium and Deputy Superintendent of Research for the IFRF. Due to this last office, he is a Member of the IFRF Joint Committee and the Monitoring Council; on assuming the task of Director IFRF, Neil has proffered his resignation to the Joint Committee via the Monitoring Council.

It will be my pleasure to hand over the post of Director IFRF to Neil at the beginning of October.  But I must also inform you that during this interim management period, that I have agreed to continue on a part-time basis, to assist by managing ongoing IFRF contracts, to direct the IFRF Research Station and to manage the IFRF Member Services. Resident administrative support will continue to be provided by Astrid Deen and technical support by Giovanni Coraggio.

There are many activities planned for the Autumn, Winter and the Spring and I look forward to working with my colleagues in this restructuring of the IFRF.