ICE Council update December 2024

In my first meeting as chair of the ICE Council, I was delighted to welcome new council members starting their three-year term:

• Anisa Koci
• Stuart Allen
• Carlos De Freitas 
• Antonios Palatianos
• Simon Wanklyn
• Gráinne Murray
• John Bridgeman
• Chris Caves
• David Clegg
• Rhiannon Evans
• Ruth Marsden

We also said thank you to Jose Lores, who has stepped down as the international representative for Europe and Central Asia, and welcomed Enrique Huertas Garcia, who will fill this post as a casual vacancy until November 2025.

Inspiring Engineering Excellence Community Advisory Board (IEE CAB)

Co-chair of the group, Andy Alder, provided an update on the IEE and the plan for 2025.

The main purpose of the group is to develop and enact core knowledge programmes in line with the ICE plan.

Care has been taken to ensure the diversity of the group in terms of its range of perspectives, its location and its expertise to ensure it can support the breadth of the ICE’s ambitions while supporting the work of the other CABs.

In the coming year, the IEE CAB will be looking at a number of projects including:

• PAS for productivity – the ICE is in conversations with BSI and DfT about progressing this.
• Productivity lifecycle guide – Linked to the PAS for productivity, the guide will signpost existing information to provide engineers with the tools they need to implement the standard.
• Impact of AI – the ICE will host two workshops in Q1 2025 to feed into a short research paper on the challenges and opportunities presented to the industry by AI.
• IEE conference – Use the ICE awards to hold a ‘Festival of knowledge and excellence’ between 2 and 3 July 2025.
• Design Champions – the IEE will work with Birdi & Partners to consider the emerging role of the design champion and how it can be effective.

ICE strategy

Following a presentation on the scope of the strategy review from the director general and secretary, council was asked to consider strategic questions to inform the development of the theory of change for the ICE.

These included:

• How do we want the civil and infrastructure engineers of the future to be?
• How do we want the industry to be?
• How do we want infrastructure policy to be?
• What is our role in wider society? 

Working with the executive team the trustees had agreed on three key priorities for the organisation: 

1. To be a growing, innovative and diverse institution
2. To engage and empower our global networks
3. To be a trusted and impartial source of expertise

Council was asked to consider these priorities and discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the ICE achieving these priorities.

The feedback from council will be invaluable in helping trustees to now shape the strategy ahead of the trustees strategy away day in February 2025.

Council will then receive an initial draft of the strategy to review at its next meeting in April.

ICE President 2025/26 

I am delighted to say that council unanimously approved Senior Vice President David Porter to become the 162nd president of the ICE in November 2025.

I found the session to be extremely productive and look forward to working with council in 2025.