An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1991-1995: THE FAIRCLOUGH YEARS 91While a series of proposals were made, we found that we could not provide a convincingresponse to the question which came up, with unfailing regularity, from potential Registrants:‘What is in it for me?’ We never formulated an adequate and acceptable answer.”Sales of EngC items initially dropped during 1991. However, new products were developedand introduced in the following year. The structure for a separate Trading Company withinthe framework of the EngC was planned and a special Visa credit card for Registrants wasintroduced in collaboration with the Beneficial Bank.The Royal Academy of EngineeringBack in February 1976, on the initiative of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and agroup of distinguished engineers, the Fellowship of Engineering had been founded as a multidisciplinedbody under the auspices and Charter of the CEI, to act for the benefit ofengineers, engineering, and society as a whole. It was felt that a prestigious body of engineersshould be created in order to represent and further the understanding and professionalknowledge of engineers across the whole spectrum of their activities. The inaugural meetingwas held at Buckingham Palace in June 1976. The 126 founder Fellows, all CharteredEngineers, were either engineering Fellows of the Royal Society, or Chartered Engineersconsidered by the engineering Institutions to be the most eminent in their professions. Thosewithin the Fellowship of Engineering were entitled to use the designatory letters FEng.Membership was limited to one thousand.In 1983, at the dissolution of the CEI, following the creation of the EngC, the Fellowship ofEngineering, which had always acted independently anyway, ceased to continue under thewing of the new body but was granted its own Royal Charter in May. The use of the postnominalletters FEng had caused some confusion, some Fellows using FEng in addition toCEng, others using FEng in preference to CEng; other Fellows, believing that CEng indicateda “professional engineer”, the preferred CEI term in any case, rarely added FEng after theirnames, much to the disappointment of their colleagues.In March 1992 the Fellowship of Engineering’s Royal Charter was revised in anticipation ofits change of title in July 1992 to The Royal Academy of Engineering with the graciousconsent of Her Majesty The Queen. Initially the Fellows continued to be designated FEng,but in 1999 the practice was altered and Fellows thereafter used the post-nominal lettersFREng, thus removing any conflict, perceived or real, with CEng. Whilst the aims of theFellowship, which were taken on by the Academy, were totally compatible with Sir JohnFairclough’s unification mission, it is interesting to observe that none of Sir John’s publishedstatements on unification, nor any debate on it, appears to have considered incorporating theAcademy within the “reformed” EngC – and yet there was always a majority of Fellows onthe steering groups or committees who could have implemented this if they had wanted to.Maybe unification, after all, had its boundaries!Notwithstanding, the Royal Academy of Engineering, which acted as the national member ofthe international Council of Academies of Engineering and Technology Sciences, maintainedclose ties with the EngC, having many common goals. One of the major activities of theRoyal Academy of Engineering continued to be the funding and administering of schemes toassist engineers in gaining experience nationally and internationally and to promoteengineering in both industry and academic circles.© Engineering Council UK 2004