From Birdcage Walk

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

Dear Member,

Wednesday evening was another important day in the recent history of our Institution. Not only did we have a successful Annual Meeting where the accounts were adopted unanimously, but we also installed seven recruits to form the majority of our new Trustee Board. I have a personal interest of course in being your 134^th President following in the footsteps of Robert Stephenson who had studied at Edinburgh University, but let’s recognise too the other six new Trustees who have volunteered to take on the challenge of leading us over the coming year.  We now have nine of our thirteen Trustees who were not in post at the time of the Special Meeting.

I have been on a rapid learning curve. The Institution is at an exciting stage of its evolution as we are just about to embark on a programme that will deliver the recommendations in our three Reviews.  It is going to mean change, admittedly mostly for those in and around Birdcage Walk, that will strengthen us as a member-led charity.  Our goal of ‘improving the world through engineering’  is fixed, but the way we generate enthusiasm, build trust, and work with others will be new.  We will have an updated code of conduct that reflects our role in society and we will increase access to business and finance expertise to ensure that we are able to quickly respond to both threats and opportunities as they arise.

My approach is that we will operate as a team. That team will be both the twelve Trustees with me on Trustee Board and the many hundreds of other active Members across Council and the other Boards and Committees we operate. We will know our roles and we will respect the contributions that others can make. That goes for employees as much as volunteers. Together I am certain that we can achieve much and certainly drive a positive culture of collaboration.  Whilst we can learn from the past, it is only the future that we can change.

My first task is to talk to all of the Trustee Board individually to form a work plan for each of them for the coming year. As well as being Trustees it is normal that they also Chair one of the main subsidiary Boards like RSB or QMB.  In total there are twenty-four such roles and the key for me is to match their skills and enthusiasm with the best roles for each of them personally.  I will be working closely with the President-Elect, Terry Spall, to make sure that we get this right.  We will also keep a close eye on the potential to co-opt additional skills where we think we can’t make a match or have enough resource with what you have elected for us to work with. 

I have much appreciated the expressions of support received from members all over the world.  In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, who was a student of engineering at Edinburgh University, let us all aspire further to the IMechE continuing to be “what the world has long been waiting for".

Joe McGeough

President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers

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