FESI is the membership organisation for engineering structural integrity in the UK. FESI represents the UK in Europe through the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS). FESI influences and disseminates the latest advances in structural integrity, promotes the exchange of relevant technologies and knowledge between industrial, regulatory, academic, and professional organisations, encourages best practice in structural integrity, and provides a practical resource for anyone working in this field.

One of FESI’s chief aims is to help improve the safe performance of and realise the economic potential inherent in the UK’s engineering assets. In addition it seeks to reduce environmental impact by optimising plant performance. This is mainly achieved through the organisation of seminars and training courses, and the publication of various textbooks and monographs through our publishing arm FESI Publishing.

Increasingly, organisations are recognising the fact that engineering structural integrity’s cross-industry, multidisciplinary technologies, methodologies, and practices, underpin the success and safety of their current and future operations. Such organisations range from the sectors of health, medical and healthcare industries, through architecture, construction, manufacturing, all branches of engineering and transport, to the renewable power generation, petrochemical, nuclear, biomedical, electronic and aerospace industries.

FESI’s role as the UK’s authority on structural integrity is supported and endorsed by a number of eminent and progressive organisations drawn from such sectors. These valued sponsors acknowledge that the integration of structural integrity into their corporate policies has shown benefits for their development, operational safety, efficiency, and sustainability. Sponsoring FESI and its events and publications is a way of helping to spread the positive message about engineering structural integrity.

FESI is steered by a Council of structural integrity experts and specialists and its activities are overseen by a Senior Advisory Group (SAG) comprising of internationally recognised eminent experts in the field. FESI also has a Student and Early Career Council (SECC) that reports to the main Council.

FESI facilitates the effective implementation of engineering structural integrity technologies and methodologies across many industry sectors, and promotes cross-industry knowledge transfer and the development of technologies which will support safe and cost-effective engineering design and through-life reliability.

FESI works to reduce the incidence of engineering failures, which may be costly in terms of human life, environmentally and economically, by helping to develop and encourage good practice and by raising awareness in areas such as risk based tools and methods, and the quantification of failure.

The provision of quantifiable structural integrity assessment is an engineering function, but one involving a range of disciplines from mechanics and materials, to corrosion chemistry and applied physics, integrated within technical disciplines such as fracture mechanics, risk based assessment and maintenance and non-destructive examination (NDE), which provide the tools that can improve failure avoidance and underpin life prediction and through-life management of ageing plant and components.

FESI’s integrated approach to areas such as inspection, monitoring, diagnosis, analysis, materials, IT and assessment methods, and their effectiveness in application, means it is ideally placed to bring these methodologies together with lessons learned from engineering failures, disasters, and catastrophes. FESI makes available new developments and potential solutions, thus helping companies to assure engineering integrity in their activities. This cross-sectoral, holistic approach to engineering structural integrity discourages silo thinking and helps to demolish the conventional boundaries between disciplines that has, through gaps and shortfalls in practice and knowledge, resulted in failures.

FESI has formed constructive links with international structural integrity communities in order to introduce their thinking and experience to the UK. FESI has recently worked closely with, for example, Beihang University, Beijing, which is one of China’s foremost universities in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics, and with the Consortium of Chinese Structural Integrity engineers and scientists. FESI represents the UK in Europe through the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS). All members of FESI automatically join ESIS through a reciprocal arrangement.

FESI was established in 2001 in response to an urgent need for a forum which would focus on best practice in the assessment of structural integrity across industry sectors and businesses.

All countries suffer a slow but continuous deterioration of their engineering plant and the possibility of serious accidents, all of which cause grave concern to society. Railways, automobiles, aircraft, roads and bridges, chemical plant, shipping, off-shore structures, computer software, energy production and transmission systems, and so on, all require continuous surveillance and constant improvements. Frequently such problems lead to unnecessary expensive legal actions in national and international courts. No engineering discipline is immune when considering plant failures and yet modem facilities, together with a wide knowledge base, plus a desire to constantly improve the design, manufacture, and usage of engineering products are readily available in depth but need to be integrated for the benefit of all concerned.

Since its launch, FESI has brought together a number of senior engineers, scientists, and other practitioners with technical specialisms. This national group, drawn from various industries, businesses, and the academic world, has, and continues to, explore the current and developing challenges of the engineering structural integrity community.

FESI promotes engineering structural integrity through educational programmes and the provision of resources. These include:

• CPD seminars and training courses, some of which are held jointly with associated professional bodies such as IMechE and SIMoNET.
• ESIA conferences, the series of international conferences on the subject of engineering structural integrity assessment, organised by FESI and involving leading authorities from industries, businesses, and academic institutions, from within the UK and from around the world.
• Invitations to national and international conferences and seminars, jointly organised by FESI in collaboration with a partner organisation.
• ESIA Conference proceedings, books and publications, and other conference proceedings, which are available to purchase online.
• Access to European engineering structural integrity through ESIS, the European Structural Integrity Society. FESI’s members automatically become members of ESIS.
• FESI’s Corporate Sponsorship Programme, through which companies and institutions have an opportunity to align themselves with the UK’s membership organisation.
• An opportunity to participation in and contribute to the development of engineering structural integrity in the UK.