An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1996-1998: THE RUDGE YEARS 113EngC representatives also attended the Conservative and Liberal-Democrat annualconferences. It became EngC policy to provide a presence at the annual conferences of allmajor political parties.However, with hindsight it seems clear that much more advantage could have been taken ofthe MOU, always assuming, in the light of the “New Relationship”, co-operation from theInstitutions – maybe a big assumption in view of their desires to enjoy their own close contactwith Government Departments.Committee DevelopmentsSenate met five times during 1997 receiving reports from the BEP, the BER and theExecutive Board. It approved the Memorandum of Understanding [Annex G] to which wehave just referred. The end of 1997 saw the retirement of 16 transition Senators, who hadbeen elected in 1995 to serve during the first two years of the new EngC. A further 15transitional members, who had been elected in 1995 for 3 years, retired in 1998. TwoSenators, Sir Peter Williams and Sir Michael Lickiss, nominated by the Privy Council retiredfrom Council; the former was replaced by Dr Robert Hawley whom, in December 1998,Senate identified as Chairman from 1 January 1999 [see next chapter].The Post-Fairclough EngC’s second Annual Conference was held at the Institution of CivilEngineers in November 1997. The opportunity was taken to introduce the EngC’s new awardof a gold medal for “any individual, group or organization who, in the opinion of theEngineering Council, has made an outstanding contribution towards increasing the nationalstanding of engineers and the engineering profession”. Known as “The Chairman’s Medal”,the first to be awarded were presented on 19 November 1997 by HRH The Duke of Kent tomembers of the team responsible for the Thrust supersonic car that had broken the land speedrecord. At the Conference the study groups from the 20/20 Vision joint programme alsoreported: Dr Malcolm Kennedy (Vice President of IEE) spoke on Communications, Dr TonyBarrell and Dr Mark Smith (IChemE) on Environment97 – an innovative cyber conferencepresentation. Follow up reports on energy and transport also were presented, by Mrs PamelaLiversidge (IMechE) on the former and again, as in 1996, by Tony Ridley (ICE) on the latter.The findings were distributed to key audiences including the Government.To provide a framework to engender a team spirit and cohesion for the EngC staff who wereattempting to cope with major internal organisational upheavals, Mike Heath, very soon afterhis appointment in 1995, built on his predecessor’s idea of the EngC aiming for the ‘Investorsin People’ award. As Diane Davy, Secretary of the Institute of Energy, wrote in an article inthe Daily Telegraph on 16 July 1998: “One way to acknowledge [the value of staff] is bypublic recognition, such as comes from being an Investors in People organisation.” Toachieve this award its assessors have to be sure that the applicant organisation has “a businessplan, clear job definitions for the workforce, organisation-wide training and developmentplans and simple systems to support the cycle”. But in 1995 the EngC had no corporate planor mission statement, so Terry Smith, who had been taken on to the staff previously to lookafter QA issues, was asked to pursue the issue. He interviewed a cross section of EngCofficers and staff and after considerable behind-the-scenes work by many members of staff,encouraged by Mike Heath and his advisors, the EngC became recognised as an Investor inPeople in the summer of 1998. Diane Davy’s article was in celebration of the EngC achievingthis accolade. She quoted Mike Heath’s boast: “The place seems so much more active.Everyone at every level feels as if they are contributing to moving the Engineering Council© Engineering Council UK 2004