An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

112A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILJoint Venture Groups (JVGs)The EngC’s revised Royal Charter and Bye-Laws enabled Fairclough’s “New Relationship”to be forged between the Institutions and the EngC. One aspect of this was the setting up in1996 of short-term Joint Venture Groups, each led by an identified Institution, to considerparticular national issues that were thought likely to challenge professional engineers. Inkeeping with the Government’s Foresight programme that had been launched in 1994 tovisualise and address the implications of a number of issues to the year 2020, the EngC’sJoint Venture exercise attracted the title ‘20/20 Vision Programme’. The topics chosen werethe environment (led by IChemE), energy (led by IMechE), communications (led by IEE) andtransport (led by ICE). All Institutions were invited to participate but inter-Institutionalrivalry soon reared its head once more, the Institute of Energy, for example, claiming that itshould have led the energy group, although in reality the larger Institutions had broaderfinancial bases to be able to support this activity.The first Annual Conference of the reformed Engineering Council was held in September1996 at Church House, Westminster. Delegates and representatives from industry were toldof the proposals that 1997 was to be designated the Year of Engineering Success (YES).Preliminary reports were also presented by two of the 20/20 Vision Programme Joint VentureStudy group leaders – Professor Tony Ridley (ICE) on transport, and Professor ErnestShannon (IMechE) on energy. Reports on the Environment and Communications topic werenot available until the 1997 Conference.Interfacing with GovernmentAlthough the new Engineering Council was now establishing a good relationship withGovernment during 1996 and was beginning to be recognised as the “Voice of theEngineering Profession”, there were complications. The unification activities, as alreadyindicated, had seriously reduced the EngC’s financial resources and a General Election waslooming in the following Spring, diverting Ministers’ attentions. Nevertheless, a vitallyimportant agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was developedduring the year (and signed in March 1997) between the EngC and the ConservativeGovernment. This profound agreement recognised the EngC as the UK body to represent theengineering profession [significantly, a re-statement of the supplemental Royal Charter], andalso committed, but did not legally bind, the Government and the EngC to jointly maintain anational workforce of professionally qualified engineers. The MOU also pledged theGovernment to look to the EngC to “offer advice on national issues such as education,training, industrial competitiveness, risk, the environment… where engineering is a majorfactor.” The Memorandum was made available on the EngC’s website in the Autumn of1997. The MOU was so all-embracing that we quote it in full in Annex G.Coming hard on the heels of the results of the Fairclough Initiative, an unambiguous MOU ofsuch range and depth (that was subsequently endorsed by the Labour Government after the1997 election), presented a great opportunity. This should have put the EngC on course for anorder-of-magnitude change in activity and regard. Unfortunately the MOU does not appear tohave been exploited to even half of its full potential. In particular it could have opened theway to the EngC being the “principal representative of the engineering profession in dealingswith the Government…” (Article 4(b) and (c)). There was, indeed, a certain amount ofincreased contact with Government - some Council Members met with the Prime Minister atthe annual Labour Party Conference in 1998 when a number of issues were discussed and© Engineering Council UK 2004