High point for 2013, without doubt, is the number of members. Back in the spring, the Institution announced that for 2012, it had been the highest register of new Chartered and Incorporated Engineers and EngTechs, and had registered the most female Chartered Engineers of any of the professional engineering institutions. The official figures for 2013 will be confirmed by the Engineering Council in spring 2014, but I am hopeful that once again, we will see positive results. I am keen that we press on and don’t relax. We will still have over 100,000 members, but let’s go onto 120,000 or 150,000 – we are doing so well.
In my Presidential Address, I spoke of the need for this Institution to remember to its founding principles, and reach out to small to medium sized enterprises SMEs as part of our larger strategic objective to increase member and employer engagement. I’m delighted to have been able to meet SMEs which epitomise forward looking innovation, and which we are proud to support. On my recent Presidential Visit to the East Midlands, I visited Romax Technology, a small company of 220 employees globally, of which two thirds are engineers and 30% have PhDs.
It’s a small company that is set up to recruit graduates and to get them chartered in a way we would only expect from a well resourced multi-national company. Romax, like other SMEs, see it as so important, and sees us first and foremost as the Institution it would like to be professionally registered with, so it works well for both of us. Having spoken to employees there, Romax engineers are thrilled to have professional registration with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on their CVs.
I see this dynamic spirit even in the smallest of small companies up in the north west on my visits up there. Torotrak, MI Technology and Clean Air Power, are all on the same industrial estate in Leyland which is a hot bed of engineering innovation in the automotive industry. Probably relatively few people know about these companies, but they just prove the case that innovation in the UK is alive, well and absolutely buzzing. The SMEs are unsung, but are out there doing this work and actually, it’s not very visible because they don’t have the resources to go out into the media. SMEs are building up, however, and a great example is Elga Water, which is a subdivision of Veolia. On a Presidential Visit to the Thameswey region, I met engineers from the company which is located on a small industrial estate. They have world-leading products which are designed, engineered and manufactured in Britain, using leading techniques. The company is now absolutely determined to get their engineers Chartered with us.
It is often these smaller companies, which are taking on people: twos and fours and tens and twenties which are far outweighing some of the headline reductions in some of the larger companies.
The engineering community is innovating. Yes, we have a fantastic automotive industry, witness JLR and Nissan Cars and Honda, Toyota building hybrids, BMW and Ford investing in engine plants. We have a booming aerospace industry in the UK as well. Wherever I go, there is that pull from all these different types of companies to have our members registered.
Throughout my time in office, I have championed the need to develop the family of engineers: Chartered or Incorporated Engineers, apprentices, EngTechs and Fellows. I have been very encouraged to see the good progress that the Institution has made to enable this development. I was particularly proud to visit Martin-Baker, the privately owned family manufacturing firm that makes ejector seats for aircraft saving thousands of lives over the years.
It was a delight to meet James Martin, Joint Managing Director, and to learn about how the company is at the forefront of systems engineering and mechanical engineering techniques: a world-leading product used in most countries of the world.
The whole company is switched onto the idea of professional engineering and all see themselves as part of that big family. I met some of their young apprentices and engineers, all enthused and all keen to join as EngTechs. These young men and women are seen as the stars of the future. The company is also recruiting apprentices again, taking on six this year.
Through our partnerships with Bloodhound and Primary Engineer, and our dedicated and hard working Ambassadors, we are working hard to inspire school children of all ages. I had a great visit with one of our young STEM Ambassadors, Mo Cissay, to Bohunt School in Liphook, Hampshire: a school which is world-leading in some areas. It’s doing immersion classes, for example technical classes, conducted entirely in Mandarin. Apparently, the effect is almost like re-wiring the brain to think in a different way. So the people who take part in it become20% quicker at doing every other type of lesson because it provides new skills and new competences to their brain. They are then better able to grasp new skills and new techniques. They’re very keen to build up what they do to support STEM.
We saw the enthusiasm of both the teachers and the children. Here is a school which is clearly going places, with a variety of STEM activities. I am really enthused about how the Institution is reaching school children and the message seems to be getting out: the schools have switched onto STEM in a way I haven’t seen for years.
IMechE is now the go to institution for any engineering story in the news, as evidenced by the massively successful report Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not earlier in the year. I was delighted that the Institution’s in-house communications team, recently won CorpComms Award for the best PR campaign by a not for profit organisation in recognition of the volume and breadth of media coverage garnered globally for this report.
Without doubt, the Institution has experienced a step change in the amount of media coverage it has generated. As I go around meeting members or visiting their organisations, I talk about the “Proud to be an Engineer” campaign, and tell people to stand out, using this simple message to communicate that they should be proud of what they’re doing. I find that when I mention the media campaign and note that our coverage has grown from £1 million 10 years ago, to £20million this year, people are nodding their heads in the room saying, “Yes, I saw Tim Fox, or Philippa Oldham, or Colin Brown from the Institution on the television.” It’s reassuring that it’s not just us telling members that we’re out there in the media: they can actually see it for themselves.
I think that it would be great to get our Institution name regularly in The Sun. Some people mock The Sun. I don’t – it’s the biggest selling daily newspaper in the UK, and I think it does a great job and entertains in its own way. The core news is exactly the same as The Guardian or The Times just in a different format, but if we could get the Institution in there, we would have arrived.
Social media also has a part to play in getting across the story of how proud members are to be engineers. Wouldn’t it be good to hear that the Institution or its latest report is trending on Twitter.
It’s been encouraging this year to see members actively contributing to the discussion in the Institution’s Linkedin group about how we should promote engineering. There are some interesting views and opinions being shared, but for me, it’s simple: we just need to tell people what we’re doing. All of us. We should just keep it simple: what do Charted Engineers, Incorporated Engineers or EngTechs do? Let’s tell everyone, so that they are as familiar to people as Chartered Accountants or Chartered Surveyors are. The only slight regret I have is that I don’t think I can’t get round everyone I’d like to: if I could stand and talk to everyone all around the country and outside the UK and say: speak out, tell them what it means to you to be proud to be an engineer, then I would be happy, but realistically, I can only get so far in the time allowed for my presidency!
This year’s Vision Award winners are wonderful examples of inspiring engineers who do a great job in helping to publicise the work of engineers and their benefits to global society. It was great to see such a good mix of male and female winners of all ages, with varying degrees of experience and representing a wide range of industry sectors. Encouragingly, the Apprentice of the Year and the two runners up were all female, for the first time in the award’s history.
It was inspiring to meet them and to be able to recognise their achievements both at the Vision Awards ceremony itself and at the Annual Dinner. I was also inspired during my visit to the Caledonian College in Oman. I met a group of students who had entered Formula Student this summer. They weren’t at the top of the leader board. It was their first time at Formula Student. However, they did incredibly well in the business presentation and they learned, saw what others were doing, and rather than being disheartened, they were more determined. They were all smiles and they were going to go back next year and perform even better.
To this group of international engineers, I gave a stripped back version of my Presidential Address and they were really avidly watching, to a person. It was a mixed sex team – which was great to see – it was heartening to see their enthusiasm. They were so proud already.
Every time I meet young engineers – and I do a lot of interviewing for my company – what really comes across is how professional, confident and able they are, particularly compared with how I was when I was young. It fills me with great heart for the future – great people who will be going places. They will lead this country and our engineering future in a very positive way. We owe it to them to give them every possible chance, because it’s my generation which in its widest sense – whether that is politicians, directors, or whoever – which has let our engineering go. We have to support these people in coming along and putting it back together, and raising our game. I’m absolutely confident they will do that; they are superb.
I’m thoroughly enjoying my presidency, finding it very rewarding, and hope I can make a difference to some of the ways of the Institution works, bringing the Presidential role up to date a bit more, making it a bit more modern outlook, bringing more young people on board, bringing more diversity to the Institution.
I am very pleased to have led the special meeting this month. We approved both motions with very strong support and none against. This modernised the Trustee Board elections, allows more electronic meetings, and removed gender references from our by-laws and charter. This is a first for professional engineering institutions.
We have achieved such a lot this year, so can we expect in 2014 and beyond? Looking back over the past five to six years in particular, we can see clearly where we’ve come from and where we’ve got to. We now have a stronger balance sheet, and a stronger revenue stream. We’ve changed our organisation in the sense of having invested in learning and development companies and having extracted ourselves from publishing. Now, thanks to working with the IET, it’s helped us to look at ourselves and say where are we going next? Are we content to continue on a steady upward path, or do we want to do something radically different? What does that next stage look like? To that end we are doing quite a lot of work with Trustees and Council to address the big picture and long term strategic objectives for five, ten or 20 years’ time.
What characterises the Institution this year is that we are probably the most dynamic institution of all. We’re getting noticed, we’ve got the ear of Government, and we’re doing all the right things. I want to say a big thank you to the Chief Executive Stephen Tetlow and everyone on the staff – they’ve done a fantastic job. Likewise, the efforts, work and endeavours of members all around the world are terrific. There’s a real energy about the Institution. We’ve come so far, we owe it to our current and future members to stay ahead of the game. I wouldn’t be content if we were just easing along the same path.
My Christmas wish would be to stop those engineers who talk negatively about our profession and the family of engineering, and get them to always to talk positively and proudly about what we do! As we approach the end of 2013, I wish all members around the world a relaxing seasonal break, and a very successful 2014.
