'Inside Track' - latest update from our President

Homepage
News
News article

Institution news

This is the seventh edition of Inside Track for the 2021/22 year, based mainly on the Trustee Board meeting held on 17 March. As before, it aims to give you a summary of our discussions.

Welcomes

The President welcomed Bowman Bradley, Vice-Chair of IMechE Council.

Inclusion moment

Roy Allan presented an overview of his thoughts on D&I matters whilst Peter Flinn ran through how he was personally using the Institution’s four values – the ‘4i’s’.

The key strategic items for discussion in this meeting were the audit & risk management of the Institution, the membership targets for 2022, the future plans for the Birdcage Walk buildings, and support to engineers in Ukraine.

Financial performance

P2 results indicate that we are currently ahead of budget, due mainly to underspend on Learned Society activities. PEP limited is currently slightly behind budget but will at least catch up when a large Sonaspection project, where the client is asking for more work, is shipped.

Report from Audit & Risk Committee

Vijay Ramen presented a comprehensive review of the work of the Audit & Risk Committee. For the meeting, the committee produced:

Revised overall Risk Register
Internal audit plan for 1Q & 2Q2022
Annual health & safety report from Philip Goodge
Corporate insurance policy schedule

The four most significant risks (scoring 10 or above) for the Institution continue to be: the Condition of Birdcage Walk building and potential for high-cost incidents/emergency repairs, Failure to meet membership targets, PEP Limited financial returns and Governance challenges

The Committee is still developing its capability but it does expect, in the course of 2022, to reach a point where it is fulfilling all the requirements of its Terms of Reference.

Membership plans for 2022

A paper from Jo Horton set out the membership development plans for 2022. It proposed that resources on membership recruitment and retention should maintained at broadly the same level as 2021. This is expected to result in the same number of corporate members at the end of 2022 - 67,000 giving a total membership of circa 110,000.

Emphasis in 2022 will remain on developing, supporting and registering engineers and technicians with six of the KPIs/PIs in the 2022 Business Plan focussed on this important area for the Institution. In addition, it was reported work had commenced on the creating a longer term membership plan as an integral part of the Institutions long term strategy.

RESG Birdcage Walk Refurbishment Programme

We previously reported the results of the indicative poll and the conclusion, in terms of next steps, that the retention of Birdcage Walk is the only of the various options likely to achieve 2/3 of the votes in a Special Meeting. We are currently working with Council to consolidate the financial analysis of the options for the HQ building and to develop the wording of a resolution to be put to the membership in a Special Meeting in a few months’ time. I am arranging a working group with members from Council, RESG and the Trustee Board to do this task. In addition, legal advice from Mills & Reeve has confirmed that the correct processes are being followed.

Diversity & Inclusion Programme

Jo Horton reported on behalf of Isobel Pollock-Hulf, chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee, and presented the committee’s report for 2021. This should be seen in the context of the D&I strategy report of May 2021 that had 15 high-level recommendations for the period to 2025, 7 of which saw significant progress in 2021. Approval was requested, and given, for 2022 to cover: continuing ethical leadership in all the Institution’s activities to ensure they are inclusive of all groups of society, continuing investment in the learning programme, embedding of D&I matters in the Institution’s overall strategy, similarly embedding in the 2022 Business Plan, and allocating appropriate resources to achieve the strategy.

Special Awards Group

A task and finish group was set up after the May 2021 Trustee Board meeting to recommend a long-term solution for member ‘Special Awards’, which are defined as: Honorary Fellowships, Companions, President’s Meritorious Service Awards (PMSA), Royal Honours and RAEng awards. The group is led by Heather Clarke and includes Martin Robinson, Andrew Ives, Alice Bunn, Alison Haines and Jo Horton. It will report formally at the next (April) Trustee Board meeting. In the meantime, a recommendation has been made for this year’s PMSA

Situation in Ukraine

Alice confirmed that there is cross sector coordination in place to provide guidance for Ukrainian engineers entering the UK, support through the respective benevolent funds, and financial risk assessment of either investments in Russia or in lack of ability to recover membership fees. Institutions were also asked to review their knowledge transfer activities in view of the sanctions currently in place and to consider restricting access to anyone who is likely to be covered by and subject to UK-Sanctions.