PARTNER FOCUS Return of the Engineer
Incoming Institute of Refrigeration President Stephen Gill sets out his priorities as he prepares to take up the role.
Join Stephen Gill FInstR for his Presidential Address, which will be delivered on 10th November 2026. Whether you wish to attend in
person in London or participate online, you can book your place at:
https://ior.org.uk/events/presidental-address-2027 Stephen Gill will also address guests at the IOR Annual Dinner on 25 February 2027 at the Hilton London Bankside. Further details and booking information are available at:
https://ior.org.uk/events/annualdinner
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hen I became President of the Institute of Refrigeration in 2016, I decided not to deliver a conventional Presidential
Address. Instead, I gave the platform to four students and apprentices and invited them to tell the Institute what they saw. They spoke candidly about entering a profession
that few people outside it understood. They questioned aspects of education and training, described the diffi culty of securing meaningful opportunities, and reminded employers that an apprentice is there to learn, not simply to provide another pair of hands. Their observations were not always comfortable, but that was precisely their value. They could see things that those of us who had spent many years within the profession might no longer notice. No IOR President has used that format before or since, so when I become President again in November, I intend to return to it, with an important diff erence. My working title for the Address is ‘Back to the
Future’. I hope that some members of the original panel, now with a further ten years of experience, will interview a new generation of students and apprentices. We will hear what has changed, what has not, and whether the questions asked in 2017 still resonate today. There is a wider purpose behind this than
revisiting an earlier address. People entering a profession bring energy, curiosity and what we might call “fresh eyes”. They notice its language, customs, barriers and contradictions before these become familiar. As their knowledge and experience grow, however, they also begin to understand why things are as they are. That understanding is essential, but it can gradually become acceptance. This creates a paradox: by the time people have
acquired suffi cient knowledge, credibility, and infl uence to change their profession, they may no longer see as clearly what needs to change. The answer is not to romanticise youth or dismiss experience. Newcomers do not possess the
whole picture, while experienced engineers hold technical knowledge, professional judgement and institutional memory that cannot be replaced. A healthy profession needs both. It must pass experience forward while allowing fresh thinking to travel back. That principle will help shape my Presidency within a broader theme: ‘Return of the Engineer’.
"The “Return of the Engineer” is therefore not a nostalgic call for the past. It is a theme about what the future requires: people who can combine technical competence with systems thinking, curiosity, and responsibility."
This does not suggest that engineers have disappeared. It refl ects the need to place engineering thinking and judgement back at the centre of the decisions our sector now faces. We need to reaffi rm the engineer not simply as someone who calculates, specifi es or installs, but as the person who understands how complete systems work, how diff erent decisions interact and what their consequences will be.
Climate change, rising cooling demand,
electrifi cation and the transition to lower-carbon heating make that role increasingly important. Cooling is becoming a matter of public health, wellbeing and resilience, while heat pumps and integrated heating and cooling systems require much more than the selection of individual products.
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Buildings do not perform as complete systems simply because every component works separately. Someone must understand how heating, cooling, ventilation, building fabric, controls, energy use and human needs interact. That is the engineer’s role as integrator. Artifi cial intelligence will transform how we calculate, model, monitor and optimise those systems. It can process enormous quantities of information, identify patterns and support better decisions. But it cannot remove the need for professional judgement, accountability or an understanding of consequences. The “Return of the Engineer” is therefore not a nostalgic call for the past. It is a theme about what the future requires: people who can combine technical competence with systems thinking, curiosity, and responsibility. It also connects naturally with “Cool Intelligence”, this year’s World Refrigeration Day theme. Cool Intelligence is about the knowledge, skills, and informed thinking needed to provide cooling and heating sustainably and intelligently, without solving one environmental problem by creating another. Technology will be vital, but it is not the answer on its own. We need engineers who know which questions to ask before applying it. “Back to the Future” will begin this conversation
by bringing two generations together. Its underlying question is for the whole profession: how do we retain the wisdom gained through experience without losing the ability to see our world afresh? The Institute is a place where these qualities
converge, creating opportunities to share knowledge, question established thinking, and support engineers at every stage of their careers in strengthening the profession for future generations.
That is the Institute I hope to help shape during
my Presidency, and the return of the engineer that our modern world urgently needs.
www.acr-news.com • October 2026 11
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