From Birdcage Walk

Dear Member,

This is a the first of a series of regular updates about the activities of the Executive, Council and the Trustee Board.

These updates are intended to give you a central voice about what’s happening at IMechE head office and to be an accurate record of the changes that are taking place now and those that are proposed for the future.  We thought that now we have an interim Chief Executive in place, it is an appropriate time to let you know the actions we are taking to evolve our Institution following the Special Meeting in May.  As you can see, at the bottom of this you have the chance to ask questions and get responses in an open public forum - please do let us know what you think.

Our priority over the coming weeks as we put together our operating plan for 2019 is to focus on the common views that are shared by the separate groupings that have become active this year.  The groupings include our Special Meeting Requistioners, as well as of course our Trustees, our Council, our Past Presidents (both separately and severally), our Regional Chairs and many individual members who have also been vocal.  The challenge is to find the common ground.  Those views that unite us.  We need to find those actions that gain the widest support so we can once again credibly claim that we are a members’ led organisation working charitably to support the development of the engineering profession.

This week’s activity has focused on the process to recruit our new interim President (who will hold office until May 2019).  Our By-laws dictate that this person must be a Past President.  This is going to be a demanding role as not only are there at least six groupings (including those named above) to engage with, there is the need to drive through the financial and governance reviews already committed to. Of the 24 people available, it was agreed that nine of them should not put themselves forward because they had either been closely involved in the management during the period under review or because they were those raising the criticisms. Of the 15 remaining a mood has emerged that it should be a collective effort and not a confrontational election.  A ‘unity’ candidate has therefore emerged who will be presented to Council on Wednesday 1 August for their approval.

On that day, Council will also be discussing and recommending details for the finance and governance reviews as well as our actions to follow up the Uff report.  Our aim is to let you know next Monday how the papers for Council have progessed so that you can get a feel for the sort of options they may be debating.

Colin Brown

• Find out more about the Trustee Board Consultation Plan