Having just returned from IIAR’s exciting 2019 annual conference, I’m even more committed to the importance of our association and the many advantages of membership. The conference, held in Phoenix in March, was another record-setter in terms of attendance and the span of our technical program.

The 2019 conference included a duel industrial-commercial technical track – an IIAR first that will be continued at next year’s conference in Orlando. Thanks to everyone who attended and made IIAR’s meeting a great success.

This year’s wonderfully successful and invigorating conference highlights the value of IIAR membership, but the ability to attend and participate in the annual conference is just one advantage of being an IIAR member. There are year-round benefits that will pay off for you and your colleagues in many ways.

you and your colleagues in many ways. IIAR membership helps keep you plugged into changes in industry standards development and is the best way to be sure that personnel can keep informed of technical changes in refrigeration, both regulatory changes and safety practices. Now is a critical time for any company using natural refrigerants to participate. It’s important to renew your membership in IIAR, so you can keep up with the many new services IIAR offers and stay on top of the continual improvements in existing programs.

As you renew your own membership, this is a great opportunity to review your employees’ membership status and to take advantage of our improved rates for multiple members. As you increase the number of members from one company, the cost of membership goes down.

That makes especially good sense for multi-facility companies –- it’s particularly important to have at least one IIAR member in every facility. Your IIAR member representative will remain informed of all IIAR services and new products available to members. This is, without a doubt, the best way to ensure your employees are well informed, have access to our monthly webinar training and to ensure that your facility remains compliant with regulatory changes.

Among the many activities and member services we are pursuing on the industry’s behalf are regulatory advocacy to update reporting requirements, IDLH regulations and the approved application of ARP’s to address safety issues in our industry. We will continue the monthly webinar training programs that offer free access to members. The IIAR Staff also provides the monthly “Connect” for members to stay informed of industry news, periodic email correspondence to introduce new publications and services, and the quarterly Condenser for news and technical information. And, many of these publications and services are now offered in Spanish to serve our growing membership from around the world. IIAR membership is the best way to stay informed in our industry.

Finally, IIAR is expanding its Academy of Natural Refrigerants certificate program with new courses coming on line, such as IIAR-6, safety courses addressing process hazard analysis, mechanical integrity, how to develop an SOP program, PSM engineering calculations and a new basic ammonia refrigeration design course. As the ANR certificate curriculum continues to build over the next several months, IIAR members are provided with an economical method to train their employees, meet regulatory requirements for continuing education and build their professional credentials. ANR courses are now available online complete with testing to obtain PDH credits and ANR course certificates. This is the best way for members to demonstrate competence in IIAR Standards, engineering design and safety while benfiting from the membership preferred pricing.

The coming year will see many changes in standards and new products from IIAR. IIAR-7 will be coming out by end of May, IIAR-2 Addendum A will be published by June, closely followed by IIAR 6 – inspection, testing and maintenance. The CO2 standard has just finished its first public review and should be published later this year. The scheduled five-year review of IIAR Standards 2, 4 and 8 are in process and should be published by the end of this year. We’ve recently published the new ARM and ARM LC guidelines, the new piping handbook is scheduled for publication in June, updating the original manual. It will also offer a new chapter and software on economic analysis and pipe sizing based on the Ammonia Refrigeration Foundation’s research. Additionally, the standards and Series I videos are now available in Spanish.

All of this means it is a great time to stay engaged and to take advantage of member discounts on all these new products and services. I encourage you to renew your membership now and consider adding employees to your IIAR membership roster and take full advantage of all your IIAR has to offer. I’m looking forward to working with you in the coming year!