General information
Compliance guidelines and transparency policy
Since EDA is a trade organization, the rules and regulations of the European Union and its Members States related to antitrust and competition apply to all the meetings and activities of the institute.
EDA has general guidelines for compliance, which are included in the agenda of every meeting
These guidelines should be reminded to the members and participants in meetings of the institute, whenever convenient.
EDA also has a transparency policy, which enables any member or delegate of any partner organization, to have access to its meetings and documentation.
This means that the person who requested access will be able to participate in any of the working groups or review the related documentation, even if he/she is not a regular participant.
For practical reasons, this opportunity to participate is limited by the organizational limitations which may apply. For instance, limit on the number of people in a specific meeting room, limited access to proprietary documents prepared by third parties, …
Permanent working groups and subgroups
For recurring topics and general themes, EDA creates permanent working groups.
These groups are meant to stay in the organization, even if they are not active at a certain time (either after they finish a deliverable or while waiting to start work).
EDA also has a permanent Technical Committee, which is generally chaired by the President of the organization.
The role of the Technical Committee is to handle any technical matter which is not included in any of the existing working groups.
The Technical Committee may act as a result of an urgency (for instance, in case of an accident, to provide advice) or as part of the office for general technical topics.
Whenever needed, a working group may also have subgroups.
The reason to have this structure (group/subgroup) is to facilitate the organization of the information or to enhance participation. These subgroups can also be permanent or temporary.
Temporary working groups or subgroups
In some cases, there might be some groups or subgroups created to deal with a specific problem or to produce a specific deliverable.
When the work towards that specific goal is achieved, the working group or subgroup will stop its activity, keeping a record of all the meetings and tasks.
Work plan and types of activities
To facilitate participation and simplify the impact on the calendar of the volunteers, EDA has prepared a work plan with the dates for the main meetings and webinars.
The dates of the main meetings and webinars are available on the association’s website:
www.europeandemolition.org/calendar
If needed the working groups/subgroups can have more internal meetings or exchange work among the members with e-mails or any other way of communication.
The meetings will be done with an online platform provided by the EDA Secretariat, which enables the participation via webcam of all participants and to share the screen for whatever purpose is needed.
The webinars are more of a presentation-style session, with up to 3 speakers, sharing slides/videos/images with the participants.
The presentations for the webinars need to be handed in before the day of the session, and the speakers will need to do a complete test of their presentation before it goes live. This test has two purposes: to allow the speakers to become familiar with the webinar platform and verify that the presentation does not include commercial content.
All the webinars will be recorded and their presentations will be transformed into an e-publication.
For practical reasons and to avoid misunderstandings, the meetings of working groups will be always on Thursday morning (from 9 to 10:30, Brussels time, Central European Time), and the webinars will be always on Wednesday afternoon (from 15 to 16, Brussels time, Central European Time)
Chairperson/coordinator and reporting to the EDA Board of Directors
Even though the working groups/subgroups are open to the participation of anyone interested, they should have the leadership of specialists in the field.
Also, for practical reasons, each working group/subgroup should have a chairperson. This role can be shared between two people if needed.
The chairperson will be asked to report to the EDA Board of Directors when needed.
Generally, the chairperson will be invited to the EDA Board meetings, to report and share any comments/needs the group/subgroup might have.