An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1996-1998: THE RUDGE YEARS 139Mike Heath believed that his job was to transform the understanding in Britain of the role ofengineers in Society, leading to a position alongside other professionals such as doctors andlawyers. He wanted the status of engineers in Britain to match that in countries such as theUSA, Germany, France and Japan. He also wanted to ensure that Britain was at least a matchfor the other major economies in the world in terms of the standards set and enforced for theprofession.Despite such lofty ideals, Mike Heath’s first major challenge was his belief that the financesof the EngC were in a dire state, heading for a £1M deficit in 1996 and more thereafter. Facedwith uncomfortable realities, the Council did later agree a small fee increase for 1997,ostensibly to enable the new edition or SARTOR to be promoted after it was published.Later in mid-2000 Mike Heath expressed in retrospect: “It rapidly became clear to me that theEngineering Council had to get its message across to a number of constituencies.“I believe that relations with Government took a very substantial step forward during myperiod in office. My first visit to the DTI was a very depressing affair with officialsexplaining to me kindly but firmly that they took no notice of the engineering profession.Whatever they were told by one body was immediately countermanded by another and thenet effect was self-cancelling. Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, hadpublicly made scathing remarks to that effect. While concerned about engineering, theGovernment had chosen to set up its own initiative, Action for Engineering, which largelybypassed the EngC and the Institutions but, in the event, had little impact.“I explained to DTI officials that we had just concluded a ‘peace treaty’ and that Unificationwould change our approach. This was greeted with sceptical laughter and the comment thatnothing would ever change. Two years later, however, we had concluded the Memorandumof Understanding with Government [Annex G], we had attracted Government financialbacking for a number of schemes, we had an MP on our Council, we were giving regularmonthly briefings to the six engineer MPs in the House of Commons and had found routes tomake contributions routinely to ministerial speeches. We were often in and out of the officesof Ministers and senior officials and attended political party conferences. The generalatmosphere in dealings with Government, especially our sponsor department, the DTI, wastransformed.“Sadly, the major Institutions did not have a positive view of this success. They said that ithad the effect of starving them of ministerial contact. Attempts to include them inEngineering Council contacts raised feelings of condescension and stimulated inter-Institutional rivalry.“Also efforts to attract the interest of engineering companies were not entirely successful. Were-thought our strategy and brought in marketing expertise but, so far from our new ‘unity’attracting companies, they seemed to feel that the Profession had become more inwardlyobsessed, and perhaps they were partly right. Unification certainly was mightily absorptive ofour limited resource. Moreover, Institutions tended to compete rather than co-operate in theirefforts to secure financial backing from industry.“What still baffles me is the seeming aversion of engineering companies to free publicity. Wemade it our business to cultivate the producers of TV programmes such as Horizon, QED andTomorrow’s World that featured engineering. We found them extremely receptive and indeed© Engineering Council UK 2004