An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

184A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCIL• The defining of improved standards of engineering education and training through thepublication Standards and Routes to Registration (SARTOR); also many associatedefforts such as those expended on resources for engineering education and theIntegrated Engineering Degree Programme.• The ‘Technology Enhancement Programme’ supplying Design and Technologyresources to more than 1,000 schools.• The international promotion of UK engineering qualifications through the EuropeanEngineer (Eur Ing) title and the agreement known as the ‘Washington Accord’.• The significant contribution to debates on matters of national importance expressedthrough a range of meetings and publications on, for example, ‘Schools’ Curriculum’,‘The Supply of Engineers’, ‘Continuing Professional Development’, ‘Risk Issues’ and‘Appraising the Technical and Commercial Aspects of a Manufacturing Company’.All these efforts, and many others of a more transitory nature, were backed by powerful pressand other media campaigns all directed, as the occasion arose, to specialised audiences and tothe general public.In retrospect it is clear that a continuous increase in depth and breadth of EngC activity tookplace in the period from 1982 to 1995. The track record as a Chartered body could hardlyhave been improved during that period even if the EngC had been ‘Statutory’ as originallyrecommended by the Finniston Committee of Enquiry – and would still have been preferredby some.In the event it turned out that the mid-nineties marked something of a high-water mark. Thepersistent difficulties in dealing with the Engineering Institutions (in itself perhaps areflection of EngC success) sparked a ‘unification exercise’ to search for a New Relationship.The consequent Charter changes of January 1996 had profound effects. They resulted in thereplacement of the EngC’s Council, to which members were appointed, by a Senate, themajority of whose members were elected by a process dominated by the Institutions. In effectthis gave the Institutions a new leverage on the EngC. The intended New Relationship failedto operate successfully for at least two reasons. First the Senate with 54 members was toolarge and unwieldy. Second the plan faltered whereby the Institutions were grouped into‘Colleges’ that would be the “principal source of advice to the EngC”. In the event thesecolleges were emasculated to the point where their only function was to facilitate elections toSenate.Soon afterwards, at the instigation of the Institutions, an ‘Activity Review’ of the EngC waslaunched. The ostensible purpose was to ensure that the EngC undertook only those thingsbest done at the centre. An unexceptionable objective on the face of it - but it resulted in anumber of hitherto successful activities being terminated or hived off to the Institutions,sometimes with disastrous consequences. A prime example of this was the replacement of thecentrally-run regional activity, the ECRO (EngC Regional Organisation) by the PEIs(Professional Engineering Institutions). In each of 15 PEI regions one named Institution wasmade responsible for organising activities in which the members of all Institutions couldparticipate. In the event only two or three PEIs operated at all and then only in a limited way.The demise of the ECRO effectively terminated inter-Institutional regional co-operation.None of this might have mattered if advantage had been taken of another development whenin March 1997 the (Conservative) Government and the EngC arrived at the significant andwide-ranging ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. This recognised the EngC as the body to© Engineering Council UK 2004