LEEA Celebrates 75th Anniversary with Forward Vision
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| Ross Moloney, CEO of LEEA. |
May 9, 2019 - The Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) is celebrating 75 years since its first meeting, held June 3, 1944, when nine people representing eight chain testing houses met at the Great Eastern Hotel, near Liverpool Street Station in London.
It was at this meeting that the idea to form an association to take on the government was conceived. The name they chose was The London Chain Testers Association, which would eventually be changed to the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association in 1988.
More than just celebrating the association’s history, LEEA sees this 75-year milestone as an opportunity to look forward to the next 75 years.
A program of celebratory highlights will include a Parliamentary Reception event taking place in July. On Sep. 10, members will be invited to visit the facilities and team at Huntingdon, meet the board, and tour the facilities while networking with each other. A commemorative issue of LEEA’s newsletter, The Lifting Engineer, will be handed out at LiftEx 2019.
Most importantly, the anniversary gives the association a launch pad into the future, as Ross Moloney, CEO of LEEA, explains:
“We owe it to the legacy of those innovators who set up The London Chain Testers Association during the Second World War to think about what we are going to do that celebrate the efforts they, and those who followed in their footsteps, have put in. So, to celebrate 75 years of LEEA, we have a vision of where we want the association to go in the next 75 years. This starts by taking definitive action now to ensure we have the talent that our industry needs throughout the 21st century. This comprises three important new projects that we intend to become business as usual as we move forward: the Think Lifting school engagement program, the new apprenticeship standard providing the pathway into our sector, and the 75–75 military work placement scheme.”
Moloney concluded: “These projects are all initially being rolled out in the UK and are expected to be introduced internationally in 2020. We believe they are in keeping with the intentions of LEEA’s founders but, vitally, are also very relevant to current members and, most importantly, are measures that we think will go on to have a long-lasting legacy.”
