An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1981-1985: THE CORFIELD YEARS 19Dr Miller later pointed to two key provisions at this time:“1. We insisted on having the addresses of all registrants, so that we could communicatewith them - and we did so with a six-monthly newsletter.2. We insisted that the Engineering Council set the level of annual registration fees forindividuals who would have the right to use the CEng, TEng and EngTech titles. Foradministrative convenience the Institutions collected the fees for us, but it was made clearthat this was as our agents, and if need be we would be prepared to collect the fees direct,but at greater expense to the profession. From then onward these registration feesprovided a major stream of finance for the EngC”.By the end of 1983 the EngC had 29 permanent members of staff plus three secondees fromGovernment Departments working at Canberra House, 10-16 Maltravers Street in centralLondon. The office address, surely now engrained in every registered engineer’s mind, waslater simplified to 10 Maltravers Street. The 32 staff members were able to cope with thelarge number of projects and massive volume of work (the word initiatives was not in voguein the early 1980s) by utilising “modern office technology” – to quote from the first AnnualReport; although in practice this meant electrically operated golf-ball typewriters and telexmachines. Word processors, let alone personal computers, and e-mails had not even beenheard of at this time and facsimile (fax) machines were in their infancy.In 1984 Tony Bond, the Director of Education and Training, returned to the DTI and thefunctions of the Education and Training Directorate were split and allocated to theDirectorate – Professional Institutions and the Directorate – Industry. The former wasrenamed the Engineering Profession Directorate and absorbed the Higher Education andTraining function, enabling the existing links between the Engineering Institutions anduniversities/colleges to be further strengthened. The Directorate – Industry absorbed thecontinuing education and training function for all engineers and also the schools’ liaisonactivity, so promoting the links between industry and schools. The two enlarged directoratesremained under the leadership of Professor Jack Levy and Graham Anthony respectively.To encourage the EngC’s Council to become more representative of the professionalInstitutions and their individual members, a system and timetable had been negotiatedwhereby the Government would slowly withdraw its direct influence (and, incidentally, itsfunding). Accordingly, on 24 November 1984 the Secretary of State for Trade and Industryceased to have authority to appoint members to Council; from this time members wereappointed from those nominated from an agreed “List and Schedule”. The List contained thenames of those Chartered Engineers nominated by organisations of employers, educationalinstitutions and Nominated Chartered Engineering Institutions; the Schedule contained thenames of individuals of standing drawn from professions other than engineering - forexample but not exclusively, trades unions, education, industry and public life. The List andSchedule were created at the end of 1984 from the names of those submitted by a wide rangeof individuals and organisations in accordance with the Bye-Laws and Regulations.The Chairman, Sir Kenneth Corfield, had originally been appointed until 31 December 1984.However, in November 1984, to meet the requirements of the EngC’s financial and businessyear ending on 31 December and to accommodate the time needed to prepare and finalisereports and accounts for an Annual Report presented to a General Meeting in the followingMay, Sir Kenneth agreed to have his term extended (along with the terms of offices of all© Engineering Council UK 2004