Eng. Lal Weerasinghe appointed as Imeche Sri Lanka’s new Chairman

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Imeche) Sri Lanka Group was held recently.

The newly-appointed Chairman Eng. Lal Weerasinghe, who is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer from the University of Surrey, UK and the present Director/general Manager of Sierra Readymix (Pvt.) Ltd, is also an alumnus from the first NDT batch of the Ceylon College of Technology – now known as the University of Moratuwa. He comes with over 50 years of service in the field, both locally and overseas.

In his opening remarks, while thanking all the past Chairmen – Eng. Russel De Zilva, Eng. Lucian Pereira and Eng. Sam Perera, for uplifting the standard of the Imeche, he proposed to continue in their footsteps as well as introduce a new vision to create an entrepreneur development programme for engineers.

His new vision came in line with the keynote speakers speech by Eng. Lalith Kahatapitiya, where he emphasised that all engineers should eventually also become entrepreneurs and not be limited to working as an employee.

Weerasinghe’s new vision is largely to encourage all young engineers that pass out from universities to utilise their theoretical knowledge to develop technologies that would help in the sustainable utilisation of resources to overcome the modern problems in our society and become young entrepreneurs with their innovative ideas and solutions. As a motivational programme to facilitate this, he proposed a competition between the students at university level, where students are to present a project once a month or once in two months to an experienced set of panellists, who are already in the industry, where prizes will be given to the top three projects, to encourage more students to get involved and share their innovative ideas and solutions.

Furthermore, he has even prepared to provide the workshop facilities, finances and technical knowledge to bring these top three projects to life, as he believe all engineers should be able to make a beneficial contribution to the country using their well-earned knowledge and expertise.

Weerasinghe has plans to liaise with the universities in order to determine solutions that can help towards the economic development of our country. He also aims to select a few CSR projects through the Sirasa Gamamedda Programme, as the Imeche had done previously, when Imeche President Carolyn Griffiths had also joined them for the opening ceremony of the Ginigathhena school project, which gave good publicity for the Imeche UK as well. Furthermore, once the current situation improves, Weerasinghe would like to arrange industrial visits to places such as the National Engineering Research and Development (NERD) Centre, together with the help of Dr. Leelandanda, in order to help engineers learn about their research and development activities, which would also be a great help for entrepreneur development.

Some of the projects and ideas that come out from these programmes can also be exhibited at exhibitions or through CSR activities that would help improve the living standards of people, which could also be presented at the International Best Practice Awards.

Weerasinghe expressed his hope for the year ahead of a positive outcome and a great contribution to the country through the institution with the support of all members.