The Chartered Institute has set up an extensive website – www.arbitrators.org – including, in the limited-access members’ section, a directory of Institute members. Headquarters wants to encourage more members to use it. Have you yet registered your details on the website? If not, you are failing to take advantage of a valuable networking tool.

The website will also provide you with a good way to keep abreast of events at the Chartered Institute and more widely in arbitration and ADR. Take a look today!

Here, as an appetiser, are two of the useful news items that you might find there.

From 1 April the Chartered Institute is providing a new adjudication service. The purpose is to provide independent impartial adjudication when disputes arise over the climate change levy between the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and those industry sectors and companies undertaking to meet targets for improving their energy efficiency. The Chartered Institute has set up a new panel for this, which will offer fresh opportunities for suitably qualified members to undertake adjudication work. More information from the Chartered Institute’s website, or from Abigail Jennings at Bloomsbury Square.

Do you want to learn how mediation techniques can resolve commercial and construction disputes? Then take a week in Paris from 16 to 20 June for a training course at the International Chamber of Commerce. Details and application forms on the Chartered Institute’s website.

One of the most dynamic among the Chartered Institute’s overseas branches is the Malaysian Branch, registered in 1993. They are currently endeavouring to expand their membership beyond architecture, quantity surveying, engineering and the law into finance, human resources, medicine and other professions.

The Branch runs a programme of meetings and talks. Recent events include an arbitrators’ surgery, an entry-level course for fifty-six candidates, a golf competition and an annual dinner. They also produce an annual newsletter.

Most ambitiously of all, at the end of February the Branch organised for the first time an international arbitration conference in Kuala Lumpur. The conference focused on arbitration in Asia, with contributions from speakers from the Asia-Pacific region on the UNCITRAL Model Law and its proposed adoption in Malaysia; on court intervention in arbitration proceedings; on the enforcement of arbitral awards; and on an overview of recent developments in arbitration in the region. We understand that the conference was a great success; there is now talk of holding it annually, with the various CIArb branches in South East Asia, Hong Kong and China taking it in turns to act as hosts.

We congratulate the Malaysian Branch on their successful initiative and wish them continued success in the future.