During the recent Costa Rican Congress of Maintenance Engineering in San Jose, Costa Rica, the International Council for Machinery Lubrication (ICML) formalized its cooperation with the Costa Rican Association of Maintenance (ACIMA), signaling a new era for Costa Rica’s lubrication practitioners. An active and visionary association, ACIMA celebrated its 20th year of operations in 2011. The association published a book dedicated to the history of its first 20 years, entitled “Passion for Maintenance.”
In both passion and mission, it is evident that ICML has much in common with ACIMA. Although ICML’s niche is specifically devoted to an area of maintenance, namely machinery lubrication and oil analysis, the parallels are clear. ACIMA’s mission is “to work for the strengthening of professionals that work in the field of maintenance engineering through suitable knowledge transfer and respect to the highest ethics with the objective of contributing to the national development of Costa Rica.” This is very much in line with ICML’s mission of dignifying the careers of machinery lubrication and oil analysis professionals by facilitating growth and development of machinery lubrication as a technical field of endeavor.
At the recent Costa Rican Congress of
Maintenance Engineering, ACIMA president
Humberto Guzmán (left) and ICML’s Suzy Jamieson
(right) signed a memorandum of understanding
for the mutual promotion of the
two organizations’ missions.
Among its activities, ACIMA takes very seriously its role in qualification of Costa Rican professionals, having close ties with the Technical Institute of Costa Rica (TEC) and offering several continuing-education opportunities for Costa Rican maintenance professionals. These include seminars, training courses and conferences. Like ICML, ACIMA has an awards program and publishes Revista Mantenimiento (Maintenance Magazine).
During last year’s Mexican Congress of Maintenance and Reliability, Carlos Calderón Borge and Julio Carvajal Brenes, a long-time volunteer of ICML and one of the founding members of ACIMA, were instrumental in the development of the cooperation between ICML and ACIMA. At the close of this year’s congress, ACIMA’s current president, Humberto Guzmán, signed the memorandum of understanding between ICML and ACIMA for the mutual promotion of the organizations’ missions, along with the offering of ICML exams by ACIMA for Costa Rican professionals, with the goal to improve national skills in the area of machinery lubrication and oil analysis. The first ICML/ACIMA joint certification exam session is expected to take place at the end of August 2012.
Costa Rican Congress Displays Bright Future of Maintenance Engineering
With 30 speakers and more than 350 attendees from around the world, the recent Costa Rican Congress of Maintenance Engineering in San Jose, Costa Rica, sported the theme of competitiveness and sustainability, encouraging joint work to achieve commitment and cooperation in sustainable development, environmental protection and energy savings. It also aimed at favoring a permanent chain of work among engineering, education, investigation, innovation, industry and services that would be conducive to efficient and effective production.
One of the speakers at the event was Gerardo Trujillo, director of Noria Latin America and an ICML volunteer since its inception. In an informative and well-received presentation, Trujillo spoke on the importance of responsible handling and disposal of lubricants.
The congress as a whole was very impressive. Not only was the organization of the event excellent, with a rich range of presentations and an exposition hall showcasing a variety of solution providers from diverse areas of maintenance disciplines, but the attendance was impressive as well. For an association serving mainly maintenance engineers in a country of less than 5 million people to have more than 350 professionals in attendance is quite significant for a single event.
It was inspiring to see the number of young maintenance professionals attending. The percentage of women was also very encouraging. The level of engagement and interest of these young professionals was quite noticeable and refreshing to see. This was not an “about to retire” crowd but a glimpse of the vibrant future in the maintenance industry.
With the new cooperation agreement, ICML hopes to be an active part of this vibrant future for Costa Rican machinery lubrication professionals while increasing ICML’s presence in the region and giving more practitioners in Costa Rica the opportunity to benchmark their skills in relation to their counterparts in other parts of the world.
ICML would like to thank ACIMA and its visionary leadership for the opportunity to work together for the betterment of industry in Costa Rica and celebrates in advance all that is to come.
