An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

176A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILcurrent powers and governance structure of the Senate and its two Boards, with thestructure in Paper ECS(P)22/01 – for formal approval by the Senate at its meeting tobe held on 6 December 2001.3. “to delegate the responsibility to the Engineering Council’s Finance and AuditCommittee to determine the proportion of the Council’s reserves to be transferred tothe ‘Engineering and Technology Board’, and pending that determination based uponthe Council’s audited accounts as at 31 December 2001, to advance by unsecuredloan, up to a maximum of £500 000, to allow that company to fund its initialoperations. Should approval of the Supplementary Charter not be forthcoming, nofurther transfer of the assets of the Engineering Council shall take place”.The Shadow Board, responding to the Senate discussion and to the resulting amendments,issued a press release on 18 October 2001 stating that the expressed concerns would be metby instituting an ‘Electoral College’ system that would ensure democratic representation forRegistrants and for stakeholders from the ‘wider community’. This Electoral College ideawas to be taken forward at the next meeting in December of Senate.At the same Senate meeting of 3 October 2001, the Acting Director General Andrew Ramsayreported on current developments stemming from the Activity Review and the anticipatedtransition to the ETB. He made the following points:• Although there was understandable uncertainty over their individual futures, staff hadbecome increasingly aware of the opportunities offered to them by the ETB proposals.Staff morale had been boosted by the Finance and Audit Committee’s agreement to acomprehensive redundancy and outplacement scheme that would give effective helpto those unable to find employment in the new organisation.• Planning was taking place to transfer mature Engineering Council activities to otherappropriate parties.• The City and Guilds of London Institute was to take over the marketing andadministration of the Engineering Council Examinations.• Negotiations for the transfer of the ‘Young Engineers for Britain’ to the ‘YoungEngineers’ clubs’ were well advanced.• It was hoped that the ‘Neighbourhood Engineers’ project would be merged with‘SETNET’ in order to benefit from the Government’s ‘Science and EngineeringAmbassadors’ initiative.• The Industry Affiliate Network continued to run a full programme of meetings andnewsletters. [Added note: it was soon transferred to the ETB.]• A successful meeting had been held with Institution Chief Executives, and AndrewRamsay had been invited to meetings of different groupings of Institutions.• The EngC was involved in detailed negotiations over issues arising from the previousmonth’s White Paper on Secondary Education.• In the International recognition arena there had been successful negotiations to launchthe ‘Engineer’s Mobility Forum’ (EMF) – a development towards the fullinternational mutual recognition of professional qualifications such as CEng. Thisbuilt upon the success of the ‘Washington Accord’, originally conceived in 1985 atMaltravers Street by the then British International Committee for InternationalEngineering Affairs, which led to the mutual recognition among a number ofcountries of accredited engineering degrees.© Engineering Council UK 2004