NEWSFROMTHE
UK ENGINEERING REPORT PUBLISHED
The long awaited andmuch delayed report on UK Professional Engineering by John Uff, CBE, QC, FREng has nowbeen published. Itwas commissioned and paid for by the IET, ICE and IMechE. It is highly critical inmany
areas but says nothing about the activities of the various stakeholders that are clearly successful and could be built upon for evolutionary reform. It talks about organisational changeswithout addressing the fundamentals of howsuch changes could achieve specified goals. The report is likely to cause divisions among the engineering institutionswhere, for the last fewyears, harmony has prevailed,with large institutions respecting and working togetherwith smaller organisations. The report is 104 pages long
and extracts fromthe Executive Summary and the Conclusions are shown here. Full copies of the report can be obtained from the Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, Westminster, London, SW1P 3AA.
FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS
The current structure of the UK engineering profession has evolved piecemeal overmany decades. Despite great changes in society and in technology, it has repeatedly proven itself resistant to change. There is a strong body of opinion that it no longer serves the best interests of the profession or itsmembers, or engineering employers as clients in the UK or internationally or the interests of the country at large. Only themajor Professional
Engineering Institutions (PEIs) together with the Royal Academy of Engineering possess the strength and influence to bring about change. These bodies should seek to implement a detailed agenda for the restructuring of the profession in accordancewith the recommendations at the conclusion of this Report, and to oversee the progressive changes needed in the interests of themembers, engineering employers and the country. The existence of a large number of
HAWLEY AWARD HELPS PAST WINNER TO REDUCE FOOD WASTE Continued on following page
separate PEIs posesmany problems which arewell-recognised by the Institutions themselves aswell as the profession as
awhole.Many of the institutions recognise the benefits in combining certain organisational activities and they should take urgent steps to pursue these in the interests of proper financial management of their assets aswell
mergers, the existing institutions should seek to break down barriers to movement between the branches of engineering that they represent. The objective should be to establish a single “membership” of the UK engineering institutionswith the right to participate in the activities of any of those institutions. The PEIs should promote increased
As the deadline for this year’s Hawley Award looms, 2016 winner Solveiga Pakštaitë, tells howthe Award helped her. Pakštaitëwon the £5,000 prize for her project BumpMark, a bio- reactive food expiry labelling innovation. Pakštaitë says: “Winning the
Hawley Award has been so valuable to the BumpMark team; it brings gravity to our venture to reduce foodwaste andwas able to fund the international stage of our patent application. “I think it’s so important that
Hawley Award-winning Bump Mark
engineering bodies reward people using this skill to do good, so I look forward to seeing
manymore engineers being recognised. Iwould encourage anybodywith a great idea up their sleeve to apply for the award due to the opportunities it brings, not tomention the chance to experience The Worshipful Company of Engineer’s Annual Awards Dinner!” BumpMark is a bio-reactive
solution calibrated to experience decay at the same rate as the food it is labelling to provide accurate, real-time indications of the product’s
freshness. The project’s aimis to enable radical reductions in premature disposal of food by providing amore accurate indication of its “safe-to-use-by” date. The annual Hawley Award is
presented for themost outstanding engineering innovation that delivers demonstrable benefit to the environment. Entriesmust be based on
work undertaken after graduate or post-graduate degreework
April 2017 /// Environmental Engineering /// 23 Continued on following page
as thewider interests of the profession. However, there is a clear need for
muchmore fundamental change to combine professional activities between the PEIs in linewith the recommendations.While the separate institutions embodymany important attributes in terms of their expertise and reputation both nationally and internationally, these should be seen as assets to be exploited for the benefit of thewhole profession.While each institution shouldmaintain its expertise and reputation in its own specialism, this should also be seen as part of the combined assets to be sharedwith the profession as awhole. The separate PEIsmust also
recognise that they perpetuate divisions between branches of engineeringwhich have little or no relevance today andwhich potentially prejudice the interests of the profession as awhole aswell as their members. Thus, as an alternative to full
levels of registration of existing members,many ofwhich are already well qualified to achieve this. They should also take urgent steps to bring in up to threemillion “engineers”who currently have no formal affiliation with the profession. The PEIs,with the support of EngineeringUK and the Engineering Council, shouldmount a vigorous campaign to identify and informby all possiblemeans the “missing” engineers and to offer a form ofmembership atmodest cost. There should also be a reviewof all
registration andmembership grades with the objective of creating new gradeswhich better suit the demands ofmembers.While Chartered status continues to hold value, there is clearly little appetite for registration at either Incorporated or Technician level. The reviewof registration grades should therefore consider the replacement of the present three gradeswith two, namely “Chartered Engineer” and “Registered Engineer”. In addition the institutions should reviewtheir internal membership grades and consider the introduction of a newgrade of engineeringmember to be available in particular to newmemberswho have had no previous connectionwith PEIs. As regards the activities of
EngineeringUK, it is undeniable that their efforts to promote increased entry
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