From Birdcage Walk

The latest in our ongoing series of updates about activities at the Institution.

Dear Member,

“Since William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have been held in Westminster Abbey.  Last Thursday however, the Abbey hosted the ‘coronation’ of the UK Year of Engineering 2018 led by the Secretary of State for Transport, the Right Honourable Chris Grayling MP.  There were some very moving contributions from Colonel Deborah Porter of the Defence Medical Group, Roma Agrawal of AECOM and Dame Ann Dowling from the Royal Academy of Engineering.  Our Institution’s moment in the spotlight was used to make sure that we gave a thought to all those who promote innovation and education to inspire and empower the next generation of engineers.

And so on to Bristol that evening for the Institution’s Annual Dinner.  Unlike coronations in Westminster Abbey, we can be certain that none of the previous 171 Annual Dinners of our Institution has been held at Aerospace Bristol, a newly opened museum dedicated to flight and centred on the last Concorde ever to fly (G-BOAF on 26 November 2003). Over 300 of our members and guests gathered under Concorde's wingspan to enjoy good food, the celebration of the winners of this year’s Hawksley and Stephenson Gold Medals and to meet our four ‘Visionaries’ for 2018.  We also experienced an upbeat but moving speech from Mark Chapman, Chief Engineer of Bloodhound, the land speed record project currently in administration.  They have until Friday 30 November to raise the money necessary to keep the car’s development going.  As long term supporters of the project we certainly wish them well.

Our third celebration this week came from our Professional Review Committee which had its last meeting for 2018 on Wednesday.  The celebration comes from the fact that we are predicting to exceed 3,000 new registrations with the Engineering Council for the first time ever this year.  This is a significant increase from last year which in itself was a record at 2,818 and keeps us very much at the forefront worldwide in professional engineering accreditation.  It was also particularly pleasing that he active members on the Committee, who had overseen all of the volunteer activity that completes the peer review assessments in every single case, paid tribute to the support that they received from the Institution’s staff in getting through their huge workload.  A real and heartwarming example of the teamwork that epitomises want we want to achieve in 2019.

Finally, we look forward this coming Wednesday to the plenary session of ‘Engineering the Future’ at the IET where all 35 professional engineering institutions get together to share topics of common interest.  This year there are to be two main discussion sessions.  The first is on closer working building on an initiative from our Young Members which has created a new website to share news of events and take part in online discussions.  As we found and reported before with the CHAIN event at Birdcage Walk earlier this month, it is the young membership across our Institutions that has so much in common in what it looks for from us.   It makes good sense that we look to them, and to others of the Uff report’s ‘missing three million’, to see what changes we need to make to become more relevant in what we do.  Meanwhile, the second discussion is to be on joint policy.  One outcome of the Uff report that has already been implemented is the creation of the Engineering Policy Centre in the Royal Academy of Engineering.  Admittedly focused on UK policy, it does however bring us together on shared concerns about engineering issues.  One perennial topic that is on the agenda this meeting is the balancing of engineering skills supply with demand.  One area where the UK can no doubt learn much from what goes on in other countries.”

Colin Brown

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