ICE and Institution of Royal Engineers joint professional meeting 2025: how has the engineering community come together in times of national need?

Keith Howells

Keith Howells served as the 158th President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

Having graduated in civil engineering in 1974, Keith joined one of the founding members of the Mott MacDonald Group and spent the first 10 years of his career in infrastructure design and project management, primarily in the water and transport sectors. After completing an MBA in 1986, he expanded his focus to planning, feasibility, and financial and economic analysis of projects, mainly in the water and environmental sectors. Over the following decade, he contributed to numerous projects funded by international finance institutions as well as UK government bodies.

Keith has extensive experience in the planning, study, and design of hydraulic structures, hydropower, urban drainage, sewerage, water supply, and river engineering schemes. He has worked both in the UK and internationally. He led the firm’s Water and Environment business from 1997 to 2002, before becoming Group Managing Director in 2004, guiding the company’s expansion in North America and Australasia. Keith chaired the Group’s Executive Board from 2011 until mid-2019, overseeing company performance and strategic direction.

Keith’s leadership roles also include serving on the board of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering from 2011 to 2015, including a term as Chair in 2013, membership of the CBI’s Construction Council from 2013 to 2019, and participation on the Cranfield School of Management Advisory Board from 2012 to 2020. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Major General Nick Cavanagh CB

Major General Nick Cavanagh was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1988 after reading engineering at Cambridge University. Over a full military career, he has commanded engineers on operations and exercises at home and overseas including operational tours of Northern Ireland, the First Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also completed a range of non-operational roles including as the Assistant Head of Army Infrastructure Plans, the Assistance Chief of Staff for the deployable Field Army, the Director of Manning for the Army and Director of Strategy and Planning in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, Defence’s infrastructure advisory and delivery agent delivering c£3.5Bn of infrastructure spend annually.

Since January 2021 he has been the Development Director for the Advisory and Programmes Division within the European Region of Mott MacDonald.  He was elected as the President of the Institution of Royal Engineers in October 2018 and was made a Companion of the Bath (CB) on the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2019.

Gordon Rankine

A chartered engineer and seaport design specialist, Gordon Rankine has spent his career working on maritime projects from the Arctic to the tropics.

These have included major assignments such as creating one of the world’s largest harbours at Ras Laffan in Qatar, new ferry terminals in India and bulk-handling ports in Africa. 

On a smaller scale, but no less significant, has been his work to upgrade critical vessel berths around the British Isles and refurbish some of Cornwall’s most historic listed quays. 

Gordon Rankine is a Fellow of both the ICE and the Institution of Structural Engineers. He is also chair of the Society of Maritime Industries’ ports and terminals group.

Dr Linda Newton

A former adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Linda Newton has more than 35 years’ experience in infrastructure management. Over that period, she has served organisations including Canada’s Department of National Defence; the National Research Council’s Institute for Research in Construction; and Defence Construction Canada. 

An independent consultant for nearly a decade, Newton has been working with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs for much of that time to enhance infrastructure asset management in some of the world’s least developed countries. 

She was one of the lead authors of the UN publication Managing Infrastructure Assets for Sustainable Development – a handbook for local and national governments (2021).

A fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and president of the Canada-Africa Community Health Alliance, Newton is a Bailey bridge aficionado.

Colonel Jon Prichard

Commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1983, Jon Prichard read for an in-service degree in civil engineering at the Royal Military College of Science. He served as a regular officer in the UK, Germany and the Balkans until 2001, when he moved to the ICE as a director. 

Prichard went on to lead the Engineering Council as CEO in 2010, the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2017 and the Mineral Products Association in 2022. He is now semi-retired, working part-time as a consultant. 

He has also volunteered as a trustee/director of the Construction Industry Council; the Society for the Environment; the European Federation of National Engineering Associations; the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education; and, most recently, Engineers Without Borders UK. 

In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Army Reserve over more than two decades, mainly as acting adjutant/chief of staff of the Engineer and Logistic Staff Corps, Prichard was awarded the King’s Volunteer Reserves Medal in 2024.

Major General Mungo Melvin

After a 37-year career in the Royal Engineers and General Staff, Mungo Melvin retired from the British Army in December 2011 to focus on his work as a military historian. 

In 2007-12, Melvin was chair of the Royal Engineers Museum, Library and Archive. In 2012-17, he was president of the British Commission for Military History and an adviser to the House of Commons defence committee. He chaired the Royal Engineers Historical Society in 2016-24.

He has been a senior associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute since 2012 and an honorary vice president of the Western Front Association since 2018. 

Melvin’s biography of German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was published in 2010. As senior adviser to the British Army’s First World War centennial commemorations, he devised and edited the second edition of its First World War Battlefield Guide (Volume 1 – The Western Front, 2015) and designed the Operation Reflect international staff rides in 2014, 2016 and 2018.  

His next major work, Sevastopol’s Wars: Crimea from Potemkin to Putin, was published in 2017. 

Last year, Melvin was awarded the InstRE’s Gold Medal – a rare honour given in recognition of “major work connected with the advancement of historic, scientific or technical knowledge related to the Corps of Royal Engineers”.