Joint Council & Executive Meeting

This morning we held a scheduled joint meeting of Executive and Council at Clyde Rd,  from 10am-1pm.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

This evening, we held our regular Finance Committee Meeting,  followed by Executive,  at Clyde Road.

The Place of Mathematics Education in Ireland’s Future

I had the privilege today of being asked to chair a national symposium on mathematics teaching,  organised by Professor Clive Williams and the TCD Faculty of Engineering,  Mathematics and Science and hosted at the RIA.   The full programme of speakers is here,  and about 90 people nationwide attended - third level academics,  second and primary level teachers and associations,  business associations and public servants - and, for part of this afternoon, the Minister for Education and Science,  Batt O'Keefe.

Council

We held our January Council meeting yesterday in Clyde Rd.   It was extremely well attended and, although there are occasional Liaison meetings after Council including yesterday,  I think it was the largest Council participation I've seen to date.

Regulation and Licensing of Professional Engineers

I attended a meeting this evening at Clyde Road hosted by John Power to discuss regulation and licensing of professional engineers.   This was a part of a series of meetings,  first started in October as I previously reported.

Finance Committee Meeting

Yesterday afternoon we had a scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee at Clyde Road,  chaired as usual by Brian Kavanagh.

Annual Ball, and first ever Lifetime Achievement Award.

We held our annual ball last night in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin,  with about 650 people attending.  A special occasion in our 175th year,  and I was particularly delighted that Dermot McCarthy Secretary General Taoiseach's Office,  and his wife Rosemary,  were able to join us,  along with past Presidents,  and the Presidents of our regions and societies.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

We had our last Finance and Executive Committee meetings of 2009 this afternoon at Clyde Road.

Executive and Council meetings

Yesterday morning we had a short,  one hour,  Executive meeting followed immediately by Council.

Finance Committee Meeting

We had an additional finance committee meeting at lunch-time,  to finalise a difficult budget for 2010.   There are a few "known unknowns" relating to income next year,  so we will need to remain flexible in our prudent management of the financial resources during 2010,  whilst striving at all times to further improve our key benefits of membership with what will almost certainly be less overall income.

The budget will be presented to Executive tomorrow morning and,  if approved,  given to Council later on in the morning.

Regulation and Licensing of Professional Engineers

One of my stated personal objectives for my Presidency this year was to advance the regulation and licensing of Professional Engineers in Ireland.   I reflected on this issue,  as affects Software Engineering,  in my presidential address.

September Council meeting

On Saturday morning last we had our September Council meeting.

Council is now using basecamp to help organise our meetings,  including posting of documents and papers in advance of the meetings.   I encourage you to consider using basecamp for the organisation of any meetings with which you many be involved for our organisation.

Brian Kavanagh,  as head of the Finance Committee,  reported that finances remain extremely tight,  but we are currently still on course to break even for the full year.  Our main source of income is our subscriptions from members.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

Hope you had a great August!

We had a Finance Committee meeting, followed by Executive, at Clyde Road this afternoon.

Our finances remain tight, although we remain on target for a small profit for the year. Our main focus remains on our subscription revenues, both for existing members and new members. These are reasonably where we expect them to be at this time of year, are we are hoping for an uplift of new members joining in the light of our recent changes to our membership criteria for MIEI.

We had a first consideration of the annual budget for 2010, including member subscription rates for 2010. Executive's recommendations on subscription rates will be brought to our imminent Council meeting on 26th next.

Finance Committee Meeting; Executive Committee Meeting

We had a scheduled meeting of the Finance Committee, and then the Executive Committee this afternoon.

As I noted at our previous Finance meeting, our finances in general remain tight for the remainder of the year. I am pleased to see the entire Clyde Road team focussed on the issue, and although much of our resourcing is currently being invested in completing the internal IT systems project, including in particular data cleansing of our records, nevertheless the team are very committed to bringing in the financial year on a break even or even better.

Our Executive Committee had a long agenda but we managed to get through it reasonably efficiently. In addition to our usual reports, we spent some time:

• summarising the general intentions for next year's annual conference;
  
• reviewing the process we used to select a supplier for the Engineers Ireland journal for the next 3 year contract, and empowering the DG to negotiate an appropriate contract, especially in the light of pressures on advertising revenues;
  
• adopting the general revisions to the text defining our Membership criteria in the light of the opening of membership to level 7 graduates, and to cognate degrees, and the implications of the 2013 changes to the requirements for C.Eng;
  
• a progress report on our support for unemployed engineers, and an imminent meeting of our UK region in that regard;
  
• an update on the improvements to our internal management systems, which imminently go live;
  
• and a note from Jim Robinson, of our Cork region, on a recent meeting of the RIA reviewing the interest and education levels of 3rd level science students, which we will bring to the attention of our Membership Qualification Board and Accreditation Board.

Meetings, Xperience Engineering

Met yesterday with one of our new Council members, to brief her on the workings of Council.

Met today with Martin Lowery, who takes over from me this time next year, to discuss the work of the Liaison Subcommittee of Council, working with the Sectors and Divisions. We also discussed next year's annual conference and how to improve mentoring and coaching of engineers towards Chartered status.

Also had a brief chat with John Power about the logistics for next Tuesday's Spirit of Ireland event: we are expecting approximately 160 attendees, with more registering each day..

I'll be at the Xperience Engineering Primary Schools National Final tomorrow, at DCU Helix.

Council meeting 13th June

We had our first national council meeting of 2009-10 session this morning.

While there were a fairly large number of topics discussed, a few in particular may be worth especially highlighting.

Our finances are under pressure, particularly due to cut backs in government subvention for our continued professional development (CPD) and schools outreach (STEPs) programmes, as well as the obvious economic challenges to our corporate customers and partners. Our finance subcommittee has, and continues to, monitor our situation in detail. We are reasonably optimistic of at least breaking even, from the operational perspective, by the year end.

We took the opportunity to co-opt 3 additional members to Council: Dave Kelleher, Christian Scholz and Justin Tuohy. We also confirmed the following members to the Executive this year: Domhnall Blair, John Carley, Gerry Cawley, Orla Lonergan, Dan O’Brien, Damien Owens, Jim Robinson, Con Sheahan and Tadhg Walshe. I look forward to working with the Executive, and the full Council, throughout the next 12 months.

We reviewed our activities in support of our unemployed members, and are seeking further suggestions and ideas for additional initiatives. We are particularly concerned about challenges in the Civil Engineering field.

Our investment in improving our business processes, IT support, and new web technology is progressing well, albeit it emerged to be a larger project than we had initially envisaged.

A recommendation from the Director General will be going to the first meeting of our new Executive to implement and publicise changes in our membership rules for MIEI, which has the potential to increase our membership. If the Executive so approve, then these changes and publicity could be immediately put in place.

Our next annual conference is confirmed in Cork, in late April next year.

I was very pleased with the collegiate atmosphere and involvement of our Council members, and trust we can continue to even further improve the service we provide to all our members