An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1999-2001: THE HAWLEY YEARS 163A few weeks later there was a fresh impetus to the process. On 10 October 2000, Dr Hawleyagain met Lord Sainsbury who added a greater degree of urgency by seeking a short butdefinitive report on the future role before Christmas 2000. To achieve this target Dr Hawleysought from the Minister and obtained, over £¼ million of funding for research andconsultancy. To assist the necessary accelerated progress David Worskett, the recentlyappointed Director of Communications and Marketing at the EngC, was seconded to theHawley Group to manage the work.There was, of course, a large cost to this - the loss to the EngC of its key CommunicationsDirector just as his initial efforts in developing the Directorate and its work were beginning.At the same time, although Dr Hawley was Chairman of the EngC as well as of the HawleyGroup, he saw as his mission the need to fundamentally change the EngC. This wasperceived by some to be diminishing his support of the EngC’s current work and the creativechanges initiated by his predecessor Chairman. Some Senate members believed that thisperceived conflict of interest resulted in a greater focus on the deficiencies of the EngC thanon any recognition of its very real achievements. If so, it was claimed that this wasinadvertent since Dr Hawley always maintained that he gave full credit both privately andpublicly to the EngC for its achievements against its limited ‘job description’.October – December 2000Be that as it may, in a letter of 26 October 2000 Dr Hawley confirmed to Lord Sainsbury thatthere would, indeed, be a report to him in December with an outline of the topics to becovered. All this would be linked to the original strategic objectives and “the need to rethinkthe role of the Engineering Council”.As part of the continuing consultative process there were now several important contributionsfrom the Engineering Institutions. On 30 November 2000 a noteworthy letter to Dr Hawleycame jointly from the ICE, IChemE, IEE and IMechE. This stated:“We accept that challenges implicit in the Hawley Group objectives are indeed ones faced bythe Engineering Community. However, we do not believe that the Engineering Council, ascurrently structured, is capable of delivering the leadership role proposed.“The [Engineering] Council has a good track record in providing a focal point and workingwith the Institutions on registration issues….The Engineering Council has also played a partin promoting recognition of the contribution engineering and technology make to society,both to the public at large and, importantly, to those in secondary education…However theEngineering Council has had limited success in co-ordinating the activities of the Institutionsand little or no impact on Industry and other interested parties…Perception of theEngineering Council (in particular the narrow base represented by Registrants) and lack ofresources have undoubtedly been contributory factors in this situation.”This analysis was followed /by creatively exploring a possible way forward and developing ascenario that, in the light of subsequent events, can only be described as visionary. The fourInstitutions stated:“If a body is required to provide a focal point to address the broader objectives identified byHawley then this body must be a quite different one from the Engineering Council. It must bea body that is representative of a much broader community than the Registrants and one that© Engineering Council UK 2004