Feature | SAE AGM
The Annual General Meeting of the SAE-A Moving with the times was made just that bit easier with Covid – it meant that everyone in business learned to Zoom hence, it was no surprise that even though the SAE-A AGM for 2022 could be held in person, as it was, it was also relayed via Zoom.
CEO and chairman Adrian Feeney opened the AGM which despite being available on Zoom had an array of young engineering students as well as SAE-A members. This year the event was held on Tuesday 28 June at an edgy venue called The Third Day in North Melbourne under dimmed lights and with a display of vehicles on site including Formula SAE cars from Monash and RMIT, plus a virtual reality display from Swinburne, an autonomous car from Monash, a Nissan Warrior from Premcar and a V8 SuperCar. By way of introduction to the event Mr Feeney said that the SAE-A’s vision was to foster a thriving mobility engineering industry in Australia, and where once we had five manufacturers in Australia and a vibrant array of opportunities for engineers, we had to move with the times but that did not mean that there were no longer opportunities for engineers. Indeed, the next speaker, Bernie Quinn of Premcar proved that opportunities do exist and there is a thriving, though smaller auto industry in Australia. Mr Feeney described the changes within the SAE-A thanking those board members who had left – Noelle Parlier, David Young and Luke Callaway for their hard work, and welcoming new board members James Soo and Richard Taube. One vacancy remains on the board and will be filled in due course.
“We’re looking toward specific skills rather than just numbers to fulfill the positions and the jobs to be done,” Mr Feeney said. “I’d like to just talk about myself for a minute, which I don’t like to do normally, but I’ve been in this job for a while and there will be a motion coming out later … basically it’s time for me to move on. “I intend to stay on for this year as the chairman and CEO … but then we need to start looking for a new chairman, and look to how we are going to run the business going forward. We honestly can’t afford a CEO, but there’s other ways of doing it.” Mr Feeney explained that there were a number of projects important to the SAE-A that were underway, especially APAC21 and December’s Formula SAE event at Winton Raceway. These would benefit from his completing a fourth term as CEO and chairman. The motion was put to a vote and Mr Feeney will continue for another year. Greg Shoemark and Michael Waghorne completed their 3-year terms, and both were eligible to stand for re-election for an additional 3-year term. Both accepted to continue. A new nomination was received from Gary White and all were duly elected.
16 | June/July 2022
