An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1996-1998: THE RUDGE YEARS 137were awarded in this year – the ‘Built Environment Award’, run for the EngC by CIBSE, waswon by a team from Hereford & Worcester County Council; the ‘Best Practice inEnvironment Management Award’, was won by Ian Coutts from ABS Power Generation forhis work at South Humberside Power Station.The 1998 Environment Award for Engineers of £5,000, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register,Foster Wheeler Energy, CIBSE, UKAPE and the EngC was again a success. It was presentedby Prof Sir Robert May, Government Chief Scientist, to a four-man team from BIP, a WestMidlands plastics manufacturer. From 1999 a revised structure was introduced with newawards: in the natural environment, the built environment and for sustainable engineering,open to all engineers who were members of Engineering Institutions.The state of the Fairclough Initiative at this timeAs we saw in Chapter 5 the Fairclough proposals were adopted in December 1995.Perceptions after the first two years of the Fairclough Initiative may be summarised by thefollowing impressions given by Senators and a Director:Senator Brian Kent:“With hindsight, I have one over-riding view which affects almost everything within theenvironment called the EngC and whilst Sir William Barlow said this many, many years ago,I find it worryingly still true and very much responsible for many frustrations which haveinhibited the direction and influence of the EngC.“When I looked at the four Institutions Presidents who finalised the negotiations with SirJohn Fairclough for the shape of the new Engineering Council, it was clear that subsequently,when they were no longer Presidents of their Institutions, the messages and actions from“their” Institutions were very different than at the time of negotiation and agreement.“It seemed to me that the President of an Institution did not necessarily speak at all for thedeep held views of his Institution, and many of his speeches were personal and were certainlynot supported by a large majority of his membership, and this was been particularly truelatterly within the Institution of Civil Engineers.“We, therefore, had a very odd situation where agreements to proceed within the general“environment of engineering” were made by specific individuals who held their post asPresident for one year and were by no means followed up and supported by their particularInstitutions shaping the detail where, as Sir John Fairclough said, “the devil lies”.“Furthermore, the top-down Government responsibility via the DTI was also similarlydependent upon particularly transient ministers and civil servants and, therefore, when anagreement was made between everybody concerned, it was strange that the people who madeit did not necessarily have to carry it out in the spirit in which it was conceived.“It was also clear to me that the role of construction in the UK was heavily influenced by thatof British Consultants (especially in an academic sense) and had very little in common withthe whole area of manufacturing which was always at the heart of mechanical electricalengineering”.© Engineering Council UK 2004