The accreditation, measurement, standards and conformity assessment community recently came together to pay tribute to Dr. Barry Inglis and his lasting impact both here in Australia and around the world, following his sudden passing in July.
The National Measurement Institute held a memorial for Barry at their Lindfield campus in Sydney in August including a special tree planting ceremony, with NMI’s CEO Bruce Warrington and NATA CEO Jennifer Evans among those paying tribute to him.
For Barry, standards and quality were not abstract concepts, but tools to safeguard people, support industries, and enable nations to thrive. He also extolled that measurement was more than science – it was trust and fairness, and it underpinned confidence in society’s institutions.
Barry’s relationship with NATA spanned many decades.
He began serving as a NATA Technical Assessor in 1976, and over the next two decades, served as a member, Vice-Chair, and then Chair of the Electrical Testing Accreditation Advisory Committee, shaping the technical integrity of NATA’s work in the area of electrical calibration and testing.
In 1992, Barry joined the NATA Board of Directors, and in 2003, he was elected Chair, a role he held with distinction until 2011. Those eight years of leadership were transformative. Under his steady hand, NATA strengthened its position as an internationally respected authority in accreditation of conformity assessment bodies such as testing laboratories, inspection bodies and calibration laboratories. He guided NATA through a period of growth and change, ensuring its credibility was never compromised and its purpose never lost.
He believed measurement was about fairness. Fairness in trade, fairness in health, fairness in industry, and fairness in justice. He also believed accreditation was about trust, trust in products, services and processes. As he once noted
“I don’t think you can have trust without fairness, in the same way that you can’t have accreditation without measurement.”
NATA’s relationship with NMI became even stronger on Barry’s watch and he used the decades long relationship as an example to which others around the world should aspire.
NATA is indebted to Barry for his service, his wisdom, and his enduring example. He leaves behind institutions that are stronger, colleagues who are better for having known him, and a nation that can have greater trust in measurements and tests because of his work.