An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

82A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILwas to be presented on the first stage of progress to a further meeting of the Council ofPresidents early in 1993. This Council required that the proposed single body should:- be self-regulatory, although statutory powers were to be considered;- have a centralised role only for those activities best performed at the centre;- coordinate and optimise the use of resources while enabling the constituent parts tomaintain and develop their specialised knowledge of the engineering disciplines.It was considered that mergers between Institutions would be natural, not forced, indeed theInstitutions should retain their chosen identities within the new body. This was a departurefrom previous policy [and stated in the EngC’s Aims and Objectives – see Annex E] ofactively promoting mergers between Institutions.Such a menu proposed by the Council seems unexceptionable enough but as so often inNfederal issues, the devil was in the detail.The Steering Group members were:Sir John Fairclough FEng FIEE FBCS ChairmanTed Bavister CBE FEng FIChemE (Vice President, IChemE; Chairman and ChiefExecutive, John Brown Engineers & Constructors Ltd)Professor Duncan Dowson CBE FRS FEng FIMechE (Deputy President, IMechE;Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Leeds University)Major General Malcolm Hutchinson CB CEng FIEE FIEEIE (President, IEEIE)Brian Manley FEng FIEE (President, IEE; Council Member, Fellowship ofEngineering; Managing Partner, Manley Moon Associates)Rear Admiral Mike Vallis CB FEng FIMarE (President, IMarE; Director, DarchemLtd; lately Director-General of Marine Engineering, MOD)Robin Wilson FEng FICE (President, ICE; lately Chairman of Travers MorganConsulting Group; Member of the EngC)Barbara Stephens IEng MIEEIE MBIM (Industrial Adviser, National EconomicDevelopment Office; Member of the EngC)Geoffrey Marsh MBE MCGI IEng FIOP (Past President, IOP; partner in a productdevelopment consultancy)Sir James Hamilton KCB MBE FEng (formerly Permanent Under Secretary of Stateat the DES) was appointed by the Group as an executive member responsiblefor research and secretarial support.It is noteworthy that whilst the Group members had a combined healthy mixture of industrial,academic and Government expertise, they were chosen because of their voluntary positionswithin the engineering Institutions. So what emerged was very much an Institution-orienteddevelopment with all the advantages and drawbacks that implied.The Unification Steering Group met ten times in 1992, aptly identified by Sir JohnFairclough in the annual report as “a year of considerable challenge for the EngC and for theprofession as a whole”. The views of many Institutions and of individual engineers onunification were also received while Sir John suggested a “Royal or National Institution ofEngineers as the backbone of the profession”. “We must not shrink from the need and desirefor more radical change”, he added.However, when the Interim Report at the first stage of the Unification Steering Group’s workwas published in April 1993 as ‘Engineering into the Millennium’, it was clear that the© Engineering Council UK 2004