PPI Honors Jim Craig with Lifetime Achievement Award

At its annual membership meeting, held last month in St. Pete Beach, Fla., the Plastics Pipe Institute, Inc. (PPI), presented its Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award to Jim Craig in recognition of his 40 years of outstanding professional service and performance to the plastic pipe industry. Craig, who retired from McElroy Manufacturing, Inc. (Tulsa, Okla.) earlier this year, was honored for his involvement with the sales, training and the design of fusion equipment and in the development of procedures and standards for polyethylene (PE) pipe and pipe systems.?
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?Jim has been a true leader within our industry,? stated Tony Radoszewski, executive director of the PPI, ?and always a key participant on many of our task groups and committees. He is very well known throughout the gas and water service sectors as having been the Chairman of the ASTM F17.20 Joining Sub-Committee for 15 years, past Chairman of the PPI Municipal & Industrial Division, Past Chairman of the PPI Advisory Council and past Chairman of the Mid-Continent Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
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?Critical to our industry was Jim’s guidance of the task groups that developed the PPI Generic Butt Fusion Procedure for Polyethylene Pipe and the PPI Generic Saddle Fusion Procedure for Polyethylene Pipe. Jim also developed ASTM document F2620 that incorporates these PPI procedures. Additionally, Jim was on the team that wrote the ASME Code case to use PE pipe in nuclear safety-related service water applications and to add polyethylene pipe fusion to ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section IX.
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?Jim said that while he has enjoyed his work and the professional challenges during his entire career,? Radoszewski continued, ?he had the most fun conducting fusion training sessions for contractors, engineers, pipe manufacturers, and other end users because it gave him a chance to be onsite and in the field ? in the places where our members? work actually gets done and where their success is best enhanced through their pragmatic experiences. We are certain that Jim will continue his active participation with PPI and remain involved for many years to come; and we feel countless contributions from him are yet to be discovered.?
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PPI is the major trade association representing all segments of the plastic pipe industry and dedicated to promoting plastics as the material of choice for pipe applications. For more information, visit the Plastics Pipe Institute website, at www.plasticpipe.org.?