An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

62A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILcareers guidance, learned society functions for all engineering disciplines, engineeringlibraries, and become focal points for industry-education links and even for training andexaminations, with each having its own Continuing Education and Training Adviser. TheNorth East had already set up the first one in Newcastle upon Tyne with support fromNorthern Engineering Industries and the North East Coast Institution of Engineers andShipbuilders. By the end of 1989 another had been put in hand with support from BT at LongAston near Bristol.The activities of the nineteen ECROs continued to develop markedly during 1989. Fifteen ofthe nineteen now had Regional Offices, each with secretarial support and data-handlingfacilities. By the end of 1990 eighteen of them [that is, all but one] had offices. The schemewas being successfully put in place by the EngC from London but, as activities continued todevelop, more volunteer Registrants were urgently needed to help with ECRO activity. It wasanticipated that during 1990 the ECROs would be able to link into the EngC’s RegionalAffiliates and enable the ECROs to enhance links between Registrants and local activities[Industrial Affiliates had been re-branded as Industry Affiliates from 1989, as we shallexplain below.] The success of the ECROs was, as it sadly transpired, not to be continued asthey fell into other hands as will be seen later in this Chronicle.The SCRA made a significant contribution to the EngC’s work in 1990. Still under thechairmanship of Dr Gordon Beveridge, the Committee reviewed the Engineering Assemblyand the EngC’s regional structure that had been established in 1984. The SCRA decided thatRegional Administrative Centres, similar to the Northern Engineering Centre at Newcastleupon Tyne, should service the regions. The Midlands was considered as the next possibility.However, the growing number of ECRO activities, the launch of the NeighbourhoodEngineers scheme, and the spread of CET limited the number of SCRA centres that the EngCcould support and finance. As only eleven could be afforded, the SCRA proposed that theECRO boundaries should be rearranged to encompass a complete number of local educationauthorities, and so facilitate SCRA activities. This proposal was put forward for discussion atthe 1991 Engineering Assembly.Interfacing with SchoolsWISETo promote the WISE campaign [now four years old and continuing to be led by EngC seniorexecutive Marie-Noëlle Barton] the earlier, 1984, targets of girls, women and employers werebroadened in 1988 to include parents, teachers and careers’ advisers. A poster ‘Engineering –A Woman’s Touch’ was produced with schoolgirls specifically in mind and circulated to allBritish secondary schools in September 1988. The poster was also circulated to 7,000 youthclubs via the ‘Youth Clubs’ magazine for display to the 750,000 youngsters attending suchclubs each week, and supplied to a third of the doctors’ surgeries and health centres in theUnited Kingdom for their waiting rooms. A video promoting career breaks for women whowere existing Chartered or Incorporated Engineers was awarded a Certificate of Merit by theBritish Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual film and TV awardsceremony. Following this publicity the video, ‘The Other Half’, financed by the ManpowerServices Commission, was made available from the EngC for purchase at £5.75 or on freeloan for a month.© Engineering Council UK 2004