Trustees discussed the ICE 2025 plan and heard updates on the TTL product lifecycle and the CPD consultation results.
We kicked off our second meeting of the year celebrating the news that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal is now patron of the ICE.
The Princess Royal received an Honorary Fellowship of the ICE in 1992 and has actively supported the engineering sector for many years.
We are delighted we will have the opportunity to work with her more in the future.
Thomas Telford Limited (TTL)
The chair of TTL provided the trustees with an update on the business shift towards greater digitalisation.
Last year TTL made its largest ever contribution to the ICE (excluding the proceeds from the sale of the publishing business). It’s helping us to improve lives by ensuring the world has the engineering capacity and infrastructure systems it needs to enable our planet and those who live on it, to thrive.
With the sale of the publishing business, TTL is now focused on product development and investing in the digitalisation of the NEC contract. This will require significant investment in the coming years.
The chair, supported by the TTL managing director, set out their plans and highlighted the care being taken to pursue a data-led approach that will minimise risk to TTL and the ICE.
2025 ICE Plan
The ICE director general provided an overview of the key projects for next year.
Trustees were pleased to hear about the new opportunities to further develop the ICE and build its profile as the home of infrastructure.
The three main themes for 2025 are:
- Decarbonisation: infrastructure is responsible for around 70% of the world’s carbon emissions, either because of the processes that create it or the behaviours it enables. Achieving net zero requires a major retooling of our infrastructure systems.
- Nature and resilience: the world is facing dual challenges of climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Without adaptation and improving resilience, our infrastructure will depreciate, repairs will be costly and increasingly frequent, with society facing higher levels of disruption.
- Expertise in delivery: governments worldwide need to improve long-term strategic planning and project evaluation. Industry needs to deliver greater productivity, while recognising the fundamental need to keep infrastructure systems safe.
Trustees agreed with the overall direction of the plan which will be shared with council and principal committees in the coming months to aid with their 2025 planning.
The plan will now be costed by the executive team for the budget to be discussed and agreed at the November trustee board.
CPD consultation
The vice president and learning society trustee provided an update on the CPD consultation.
The consultation ran from May 2023 to March 2024 and provided all members with the opportunity to have their say on what CPD should be required of professionally qualified members and how they should demonstrate their compliance.
The consultation found that there is broad agreement that it is our (the ICE and members) collective responsibility to ensure professionally qualified members maintain their CPD.
Respondents also suggested that the ICE should identify areas where members need to periodically demonstrate their competence, with a particular focus on professional conduct and obligations to society.
The trustees will now work with the executive to determine the topics and develop a framework for members to use.
