An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1988-1990: THE BARLOW YEARS 61working party was set up to produce Rules of Conduct to supplement the existing brief Codeof Conduct. This cost the EngC over £45,000 in legal and professional fees for verifying thatthe Rules were absolutely correct – doubling the EngC’s normal annual costs for such fees.In October 1989 the biennial survey of ‘Chartered Engineers, Incorporated Engineers andEngineering Technicians’ was made available at £100 (four times the 1985 selling price). Thesurvey, the fourth published by the EngC, and based on a 15% sample of Registrants, againexamined Registrants’ salaries, employment positions, and foreign language skills, and theirinvolvement in school-industry links. It was clear that Registrants had again received salaryincreases comfortably in excess of the Retail Price Index. The numbers satisfied with theirinitial training increased, as did the numbers who declared they would recommend anengineering career to young people. It also emerged that 40% of Chartered Engineers and22% of Incorporated Engineers had a basic knowledge of a foreign language. The numbers ofunemployed engineers had fallen yet again, indicating that career prospects were good.Engineering Council Regional OrganisationsA further seven of the nineteen ECROs that we mentioned in Chapter 3 found offices in 1988from which to operate, bringing the total to ten with their own identifiable accommodation.Their addresses were printed for the first time in the 1988 Annual Report for the benefit ofreaders who did not have access to the EngC Newsletter. The EngC provided the regionaloffices with data-processing facilities to enable Registrants to be linked into activities close totheir homes or work places. All ECROs were provided with a training pack containing twovideos to help the ‘Opening Windows on Engineering’ campaign. One video ‘The Floor isYours’ gave guidance on public speaking, the other contained three presentations showing‘Window Openers’ in action.The Fourth Engineering Assembly, held at The Queen’s University of Belfast in 1988, wasopened by Rt Hon Mr Tom King, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Addressing thedelegates, mainly ECRO representatives, as usual, he stated that “by climbing through all themedia” the EngC had made its mark. It was disappointing, however, that only 81 of the 114elected members attended. Ron Kirby arranged that the Daily Telegraph, in cooperating toraise an awareness of the status of Registered Engineers, published a list of newly qualifiedChartered and Incorporated Engineers to coincide with the opening day of the Assembly.That newspaper event set a precedent that was repeated in subsequent years and also by othernewspapers.Following a strong request from the 1988 Assembly, that Registrants be enabled toparticipate more fully in developing and promoting EngC policies, a new StandingCommittee for the Regions and Assembly (SCRA) was established in 1989 under thechairmanship of Dr Gordon Beveridge. The SCRA comprised representatives from theregions, the Assembly and the Council, although the arrangement necessitated a change in theEngC Bye-laws. The first meeting of the SCRA was held at Huddersfield Polytechnic on 19July, the final day of the 1989 Assembly and was followed by two further meetings later inthe year. It was anticipated that members of the SCRA would make contact with individualelected members and with ECRO Chairmen.Denis Filer advocated [in the EngC 1989 Annual Report] that over the next 10 years anEngineering Centre be established in every major centre or region, focussed on the ECROs,with help from the EngC but promoted locally. These Centres, he stated, should offer local© Engineering Council UK 2004