It’s been the week (mid-March) in which the Queen Elizabeth Prize is awarded to the engineers who pioneered the development of the internet, and Jon Prichard, chief executive of the Engineering Council, is pleased to see Tim Berners-Lee, Louis Pouzin, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Marc Andreessen enjoying some richly deserved recognition.
“We should be investing in what people think of as the knowledge economy, and engineering underpins that. That is a win-win for the country. And Tim Berners-Lee and those others have changed the world,” says Prichard.
Recognition. It’s a sore point among many engineers who contact PE. Why, they ask, is the title “engineer” not protected in law, as it is in some European countries? Why are plumbers and gas fitters allowed to describe themselves as engineers, when they do not carry out engineering? Why has James Dyson allowed service vans to carry the title “engineer” when a vacuum cleaner maintenance bod is on his or her way? The debate rumbles on – with little sign of resolution.
Prichard, a former soldier who spent 20 years in civil engineering with the Royal Engineers, thinks hopes to get the title protected are unrealistic. “You hear people say they want statutory protection for ‘engineer’ – it can’t be protected. You can protect ‘engineering technician’, ‘incorporated engineer’ and ‘chartered engineer’, however. And you can protect the other post-nominals – ‘member of IMechE’ or ‘fellow’.
“But what you can’t protect is ‘engineer’, because it has a common usage across all sorts of things. In the US, for example, it was the guy on the footplate of the steam engine.”
Prichard is pleased that despite the long-running issue of status, engineers are attracting more attention than they have for some time. “The rest of the world views Britain as an engineering nation; just look at the number of engineering projects being supervised by British firms overseas,” he says. “But post-Thatcher and during the Major and Blair governments, engineering was denigrated. Look at the creation of the Environment Agency: the government stipulated that posts within that organisation didn’t need to be filled by chartered or incorporated engineers. It was meant to encourage egalitarianism, but in reality it missed the point of what the institutions do.”
Classless society? Prichard argues that it is easy to confuse elitism, which he is clear is unwelcome, with the celebration of the attainment of excellence and promotion of high standards.
The week of the QE Prize was also the week in which politicians thrashed out a deal on press regulation in the wake of the Leveson enquiry, but Prichard does not want to see Royal Charters – which provide a blueprint for the work of the engineering institutions – undermined by association with the media. “We want to make sure we don’t get tainted by what happens in the press.”
A Royal Charter for the world’s first engineering institution, the Institution of Civil Engineers, was awarded in 1828. It was at this time that railway engineer Thomas Tredgold described engineering as the art of “directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man”.
These words still resonate with Prichard when asked to define what it is that engineers, not just civil ones, do. “Unlike many other professions in the UK, engineers have always had an innate wish to serve others. You want to be creative, you want to do good. The Royal Charters are effectively a recognition from government that engineers are here to serve the public interest, and I think sometimes people lose sight of that.
“That’s why we make sure there are strict standards among the institutions, and that engineers operate safely in the public interest. There are professional and moral codes and should you breach them, there are sanctions.”
In terms of registrations, the engineering institutions are welcoming greater numbers of technicians attaining professional registration. At the IMechE, more than 400 Eng Techs registered last year, taking their total number to around 1,000. Registrations of chartered engineers, incorporated engineers and technicians were all up on the previous year – an encouraging sign, given that trends in registration have been on a downward trajectory as ageing engineers retire.
The relative popularity of the Eng Tech qualification – the Engineering Council says that the largest growth in new registrants last year was seen at technician level, where there was a 21.5% increase in the number of new engineering technicians – is helping to ensure that total numbers of registrants are levelling off for the first time in a few years.
Its popularity also means that some gas fitters are attaining an Engineering Council professional standard for the first time. “It could be that a gas fitter has trained properly and attained a level 3 NVQ and has prepared to commit to the professional endeavours of being an Eng Tech,” says Prichard. “The chances are they could be registered as a technician.”
Such people have to be smart to deal with dangerous substances such as natural gas and also, nowadays, have knowledge of low-carbon housing and insulation, he says. “You have to be well-trained, and well-educated. You have to know the difference between a ground-source heat pump and an air-source heat pump, and the whole carbon equation.
“As we see the impact of technology on the carbon agenda, the obligation is for technicians to keep learning and to keep up-to-date; not just to practise on yesterday’s technology.”
For the aspiring Eng Tech, he says, the benefit of registration is differentiation in a crowded marketplace. “It differentiates the business and it differentiates the individual.” He admits that having a small number of registered Eng Techs in a institution that deals with large numbers of chartered engineers is not ideal. “One technician in an institution with 200 chartered engineers is going to feel lonely. But if it’s balanced, that’s the right environment. A balance of technicians with chartered engineers will ensure that they share knowledge and develop best practice with the help of the learned societies: that body of technicians will create a virtuous circle and numbers will grow.”
Reiterating the point that excellence should be recognised rather than elitism holding sway, he says many chartered engineers have attained that status without having been to university, or have gained their qualifications on the job. Prichard believes that an advantage of the British system of registration is that it rewards experience and engineering know-how as well as academic prowess. Hence engineering company directors who started as 16-year old apprentices can eventually become chartered.
Prichard is excited about the future – demanding as it will be. Climate change places engineers in a position to protect society from the ravages of a changing environment. It is a task that he feels can be accomplished.
“My experience of the military showed me that engineers can make a difference in an environment of conflict,” he says. “Engineering underpins commerce, but also the sustainability of life. Perhaps there hasn’t been the recognition of engineers in recent times that there should have been. That is changing for the better.”
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