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The Ticking Time-bomb!
During 2011 we concentrated our Trade and Skills efforts on providing and operating a new web-based limited audience Pilot Scheme questionnaire. This initiative was aimed at seeking ANF members’ opinions on the availability of traditional skills (BODYWORK & PAINTING; TRIMMING & UPHOLSTERY; MECHANICAL & HYDRAULICS; ELECTRICAL and unspecified OTHER) associated with the restoration and maintenance of historic vehicles.
Initially the period set for responses was to end circa May 2011 but this was
extended to the end of August when problems with some translations of the web-based questionnaire were highlighted.
The initial analysis of the responses indicated that, amongst the very
limited audience, there do not appear be any significant concerns about the current availability of historic vehicle restoration skills. Nevertheless, there are signs that some difficulties already exist in some areas. Also early in the response period it became clear that Clubs per se do not undertake much restoration or maintenance work. So in 2012 we want to open up the web-based questionnaire to a world-wide FIVA audience to seek the opinions of individual Members of all Clubs in FIVA’s ANFs. It will be interesting to see how opinions vary round the world.
I believe FIVA’s work in this arena is still of vital importance to our historic vehicle movement. Therefore all ANFs need to ask the individual Members of their Clubs to participate in this work during 2012. We need such information if we are to ensure the continued availability of historic vehicle restoration skills in the future.
Also I believe it is essential that all ANFs engage with some of their Professionals/Traders during the coming year to seek their views on the same subject. With their experience over a number of years and work on probably a large number of historic vehicles their opinions will be extremely valuable. Again I encourage all ANFs to engage with their professional trades people to establish their views and opinions. A hard-copy Questionnaire will be produced and be available in January 2012 to enable you to seek the opinions of your Trade professionals.
So for 2012 our strategy will have the following key Objectives:-
Objectives
- To seek individual owners and enthusiasts’ opinions as to where there are
endangered Skills, Procedures (Processes and Documentation), Parts and Tools/Tooling; what they are and to what extent they are endangered.
- For each ANF to identify and publicise a single Point of Contact for this Trade and Skills project.
- For each ANF to encourage their Clubs to ask their individual Members to respond to the 2012 web-based Questionnaire and to seek responses from some of their Trade professionals via 1-1 interviews with some (~ 25) of them .
- Each ANF to put a Trade Supporters/Professionals database on their web-site.
Outline Plan and Timescales
- FIVA to provide a Questionnaire for web-site application to solicit views from the individual members of all ANFs’ Clubs by end 1st Quarter 2102.
- FIVA to provide a Questionnaire for each ANF to use to solicit views from their Professionals/Traders by end January 2012.
- ANFs to engage with their professional traders and service providers to seek their opinions by end 2nd Quarter 2012.
- ANFs to encourage their Clubs’ individual members to respond to the web-based questionnaire during 2nd and 3rd Quarter 2012.
- Automatic analyses to be provided as part of web-site questionnaire package.
- 1st Key Milestone – Early analysis of ANF members’ and professionals’ responses to be available for FIVA GC meeting June 2012.
I understand that our Trade and Skills work is not easy but we must persevere and get greater commitment and hence understanding of the potential problems in the future. If we don’t succeed then our ability to own and use historic vehicles of all types in the future could be in jeopardy.
As I pointed out at the top, I believe we have a ticking time-bomb on our hands!
Tony Davies
FIVA Director – Trade and Skills
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