45th Annual General Meeting: President's Report
The 45th Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday 9 November 2023. Since not all members were able to attend, we would like to share the president’s report which summarises the activities and status of CEDA in 2022.
Membership Survey
Last year, I informed you of the results from the membership survey. I am happy to inform you of the following actions that the CEDA Strategy Commission & CEDA Board have agreed on. A lot of these actions have already been completed, some are work in progress and some are still under discussion:
- Creating more public / private connections
- Better promote the CEDA online resources through the newsletter
- Find out what would attract young members to write papers
- Further promote Dredgepoint
- Collect dredging facts which address common misconceptions
- Give CEDA a higher profile and give more information on our policy work
- Engage more CEDA members to be (more) active
Commissions
CEDA currently has 6 commissions which report to the CEDA Board. These are:
- Strategy Commission
- Communications Commission
- Dredging Management Commission
- Environment Commission
- Decarbonisation Commission
- Young CEDA Commission
Working Groups
Under the commissions, we have several active working groups. In 2022, two working groups published their papers: Energy Efficiency and Seafloor integrity.
The following working groups are still active:
- Certification of Sustainable Marine and Freshwater Infrastructure Projects –recommendations to the board before the end of 2023
- Adaptive Management – information paper to be published in 2023
- Subsea Cables Integrity -established in 2022 work in progress
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions – newly established in 2023, first meeting has taken place
There is also a joint PIANC-CEDA-IADC Working Group on environmental windows.
WODA
Under WODA, which is made up of the three associations CEDA, EADA, and WEDA, there are three WODA Working Groups:
- WODA Reservoir Dredging Working Group – a paper is due to be published in 2024
- WODA Safety in Dredging Working Group – checklist will be published soon
- WODA Working Group on Deep Sea Mining – work is ongoing
WODCON
In May 2022 we held WODCON, in Copenhagen. I am happy to report that the event was a huge success. There were 400 participants, 35 exhibitors and 15 sponsors, all coming from a total of 22 countries. It was a wonderful post COVID reunion of the dredging community, with a lot of great content and plenty of networking opportunities. The financial result was also very positive enabling CEDA to continue its activities and implement new ideas in the years to come.
Dredging Days
In 2022, work started on one of the most important events on our calendar: the CEDA Dredging Days, taking place from 27-29 May 2024 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The theme is “Dredging in a changing world, Leading science and business in the dredging industry”. The deadline for abstracts has passed and the paper and organising committees are working hard to put a great programme together. If you still want to contribute to the content, please get in touch with Mieke van Loenen.
Dredging for Sustainable Infrastructure
Our continued co-operation with IADC includes the CEDA-IADC course “Dredging for Sustainable Infrastructure” based on our joint book with the same title. This first live course took place at the end of 2022 and in total we have presented 4 online courses and two live courses since 2021. The next live course will take place from 12-14 December 2023 in Abu Dhabi (UAE). More details are available on the CEDA website.
Dredgepoint
Since the acquisition of Dredgepoint in 2021, a group of volunteers has been working hard to keep the database up to date. We would like to thank them for their efforts. Thanks to advertisement income, Dredgepoint currently provides a small but steady income for CEDA. Also, it has resulted in new corporate and individual members due to the exclusive benefits for CEDA members.
Policy work
In 2022, Arjan Wijdeveld, Geochemical Expert at Deltares, started as the new CEDA representative for OSPAR in the Working Group on Environmental Impact of Human Activities.
Also, I am happy to report that Marc Sas, retired member from IMDC, is the new Chair representing CEDA for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). If you are interested in finding out more about our policy work, please have a look on our website or contact Mieke van Loenen.
Staff
As you all probably know by now, Mieke van Loenen officially became CEDA’s General Manager on 1st of January 2022, whilst Anna Csiti continued to work with CEDA, in a part-time management advisory capacity, until June 2022. In addition, Linda Adams started to work at the CEDA Secretariat in March 2022.
Financial Report
At the end of 2022, CEDA had 236 individual members compared to 258 at the end of 2021. At the end of last year, we had 112 corporate members. One year before that the total number was 110. The number of individual members keeps decreasing, while the number of corporate members is picking up slowly. We are confident that the number of individual members will stabilise and that the number of corporate members will gradually increase. We ended the year with a profit. This is mostly due to the positive results of the World Dredging Conference (WODCON).