An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

Chapter 4 – 1988 to 1990 : The Barlow YearsA High-Water MarkPeopleThe Third Chairman and the Second Director-General.A double change at the top of the EngC took place in 1988. The EngC’s third Chairman, SirWilliam Barlow BScTech HonDSc, HonDTech, FEng, FIMechE, FIEE, was elected on 17May 1988, a post he held until 31 December 1990. He was already Chairman of BritishInsulated Calendar Cables plc and Non-Executive Director of both Thorn EMI plc and ofRacal Telecom plc. From the outset Sir William’s wish was to use the EngC as the platformfor promoting the engineering profession to Government and the public, and also forcommenting at a national level on issues having an engineering involvement. This was rightin line with Monty Finniston’s original concept of the EngC as an “Engine for Change”. SirWilliam also wanted to work harmoniously with the Engineering Institutions. Accordingly,on assuming office he immediately met privately with some 15 Presidents on an individualbasis and repeated this exercise with Institution Secretaries. Whilst each President appearedprepared to co-operate with the new management, limited headway was made as each waselected on a different date and in most cases for only one year.Two and a half months after Sir William’s appointment the second change at the top of theEngC took place. On 1 August Denis E Filer TD, BSc, BA, FEng, FIMechE, FIChemE,CBIM, Director of Engineering at ICI, with which he had worked since 1955, took over fromDr Kenneth Miller as Director General. Denis Filer had been on the EngC Council since May1986, and so was well versed in its current aspirations.In his endeavours Sir William worked closely with the new Director General. Denis Filer’spersonal style was helpful as he was neither aggressive nor confrontational and as a VicePresident of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers he knew that body particularly well.The new Chairman and Director General openly held regular combined meetings with thePresidents and Secretaries of the four big Institutions (in addition to the EngineeringProfessional Forum), but as Sir William later commented: “There never seemed to be thesame four Presidents at consecutive meetings because of their election dates. Typically a newPresident would arrive with little real knowledge of the interface but with lots of anecdotallybasedprejudice which usually had been displaced by the third meeting - but at the followingmeeting a successor would appear. The Secretaries all had axes to grind but shared a commondetermination to defend their positions and oppose any increased financial support for theEngC. The Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Institution of Electrical Engineers werethe most intransigent at this time.”Not that the faults were necessarily all one way. A later Council member James McHughobserved:“Relationships depended, to a great extent, on the personalities involved. The representativesof the EngC and the bodies with which they dealt, were continuously changing andsometimes the rapport was better than at others. I gained the impression that, at times, therepresentatives of the EngC could have been more diplomatic when they were dealing withrepresentatives of Institutions.”57