ICE Council update April 2024

Our busy council day kicked off with a strategy session on how to protect physical and digital assets.

Following a presentation by a representative of the National Protective Security Authority, we had a lively discussion on how civil and infrastructure engineers can incorporate thinking around physical, personal and cyber security into the design and build of key infrastructure projects.

ICE plan 2025

For the benefit of new council members, the ICE’s director general and secretary, Dr Janet Young, explained how the ICE plan is an annual executive business plan based on the ICE five-year strategy.

She provided an overview of the process for developing the ICE 2025 plan, highlighting that much of the plan for next year would be a continuation of work already underway and that an initial outline of the plan would be shared with trustees in June.

Senior Vice President Jim Hall outlined two key themes that the trustees had already discussed for next year:

• the future of knowledge
• international

The council was then split into groups to discuss key questions around one of these topics and feed back to the group. The key themes from these discussions have been collated and will be factored into next year’s plan.

Knowledge programme 2024-2025

The ICE’s director of engineering knowledge provided an update on the plan approved by the Learning Society Committee (LSC) to continue with the plan for State of the Nation 2025.

There is a core programme of activity around the key themes of decarbonisation, water, flooding, low-carbon energy and transport, and finding new nature-based solutions to infrastructure issues.

Over the rest of the year the CPD framework is being reviewed with the aim of making it more targeted on member interest.

There will be a review of the ICE’s existing relationship with international bodies with a view to focusing on those relationships which are linked to the ICE priorities.

Community Advisory Boards and knowledge specialists

The vice president for the LSC also explained the work that has been done to streamline the Community Advisory Boards (CABs) and our network of knowledge specialists.

The existing CABS have been consolidated into three specialisms: Decarbonisation, Resilience and Inspiring Engineering Excellence.

Should expertise be needed from outside these areas, the knowledge specialists will be called upon with task and finish groups set up if needed for specific topics.

I am pleased to see the ICE continually evolve to ensure it is making the best use of our members’ valuable time while focusing on key areas that are instrumental to the development of the infrastructure sector.

2024-2025 Trustee Board

The director general reported that the Nominations Committee (NOMCO) had met in January to make recommendations about the trustee board. These were then agreed by the trustee board in March and brought to council at this meeting for approval.

NOMCO had set out three portfolios for the directly-elected ordinary members of trustee board – policy and external affairs, learning society, and professional conduct and ethics.

Existing trustee for policy and external affairs, Jonathan Spruce, stood uncontested and has been elected for another term with the same brief. The two remaining trustees were elected in the 2024 membership ballot:

• Dr Ohis Ilalokhoin was elected as trustee with responsibility for the learning society.
• Paula McMahon was elected as trustee with responsibility for professional conduct and ethics.

I am delighted that council were able to unanimously elect the following existing trustees to remain on the board for 2024-2025:

• David Porter (will become President office in November 25)
• Julie Wood (will become President in November 26)
• Richard Bayfield (will become President in November 27)
• Lewis Barlow
• Priti Parikh
• Lucy Rew
• Liz Waugh
• Ed Bingham