New Year, New Strategy

​Happy New Year to all members and friends of the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council.
I am writing this message to update you on some recent changes that have been taking place at the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council.
The Executive Board of the Council, whose members you can see here took the decision before Christmas to become a legally registered Company Limited by Guarantee. We have never, as an organisation, had a legal status in the past, but two drivers compelled us to take this decision. Firstly, the World Federation of Engineering Organisations require its International Members to have a legal status in order to be a ‘named’ International member. Secondly, having a legal status became a new requirement of the Commonwealth Secretariat, to whom we are accredited, in order for us to comply with reaccreditation requirements. Since this accreditation with the Commonwealth gives us an important platform for change and access to leaders across the Commonwealth at the highest level, we felt it to be important that we do everything in our power to retain this accreditation. Once this Company formation is complete, we will be required to make some changes to the Constitution in order to reflect this, which will come your way in due course.
We have submitted a number of documents in support of the reaccreditation process, which can be seen here. The Strategy document comes directly from the Constitution that was agreed at our last General Assembly meeting in Prague, and from this the Draft Programme of Activities has been generated. In addition to this programme, we have launched an engagement exercise to enlist the support of individual young engineering leaders to join as members from across the Commonwealth, and we are hoping that they will identify and deliver their own programme of activities too – to be defined. If you have young engineers that you think would be willing to get involved as individual members, please forward this link to them so that they can join https://forms.gle/sxpeRoytWd8Q8ZVN7
So as you can see, there has been a lot going on.
We would love to engage your help and support in these CEC activities, and to identify others, so I am proposing to create a short survey for you to respond to with your thoughts on our direction of travel, and your ideas for our future engagement, which I will send out to you within the next couple of weeks (hopefully through an online form).
We are also putting together a newsletter to go out in celebration of Commonwealth Day in early March, so if you have news that you would like to share, please forward it to Katie Momber (who provides our secretariat) and I.
We are hoping also to organise an activity around World Engineering Day, which is also close to Commonwealth Day, in early March, so please let us know if you have any suggestions.
Please do share this information with colleagues or other institutions, as relevant. And do get in touch with suggestions for how we can work best together.
I look forward to us working together over the coming year.