Trustee Board update November 2022

At their final meeting of the year, the ICE's trustees discussed a number of topics including budgets, a review of the institution’s 2022 performance, and a look at the member journey.

Budgets

Budgets are not always necessarily the most interesting of topics but setting and reviewing them in the context of the business plan is an important part of what the trustees do to make sure the institution’s finances are on a sound footing.

The ICE’s director of finance Sue Bailey took trustees through the forecast for 2022’s end of year results.

Trustees were pleased to note that the institution’s income covered its expenditure in 2022, while delivering a hugely ambitious programme - more on this later.

Following an in-depth review of the 2023 budget by the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee, trustees agreed the budget for 2023, noting that next year’s plan (agreed at the previous trustee board meeting) is equally ambitious.

The member journey

Our 95,000-strong membership is the institution’s greatest asset, and so trustees were very pleased to receive a detailed briefing on the 'member journey' from the director of membership, Sean Harris.

What struck us all was the breadth and depth of work that takes place behind the scenes by ICE staff to attract, recruit, develop, qualify, support and retain members.

It is worth noting that no financial targets are placed on recruitment and retention of members.

It means we can truly say that the ICE’s purpose is to serve society by helping engineers to maintain relevance and competence throughout their career.

It was especially pleasing to see a strong increase in the number of those coming forward for professional review since we moved to remote reviews as the default.

Professionalising more of the workforce is a key strand of our plan, whether that be for civil engineers or from next year, chartered infrastructure engineers.

And our membership continues to grow.

The institution is the only professional engineering organisation to have achieved uninterrupted year-on-year growth in numbers since 2015.

In my inaugural presidential speech, I appealed for more members to come forward and become involved with the fascinating and vital work of the institution.

I’m convinced that we could do so much more and be so much better if we drew on the untapped potential of members who are not yet fully engaged.

The ICE Plan

The ICE’s rolling five-year plan set some ambitious targets for 2022 and trustees were delighted that almost all of the plan has been delivered.

In line with our charitable aims, the trustees directed the institution to use some its reserves to accelerate programmes and this has proved to be very effective.

Achieving the chartered infrastructure engineer title has opened a world of opportunities for the institution to bring together infrastructure professionals from a wider variety of backgrounds to help tackle the world’s most pressing problems together.

Our knowledge programme is really picking up pace and we are finally delivering content and events that are really adding value to our members’ learning.

Our policy and public affairs work is bearing fruit and trustees are excited to see that the Enabling Better Infrastructure programme is already proving an effective vehicle with which to engage administrations around the world.

And trustees are also pleased to see the progress that has been made in helping members reduce their carbon footprint by choosing a digital only subscription to NCE Magazine - to date over 17,000 members have switched.

The end of a year and the end of an era

The items mentioned above are just a very small sample of the vast array of activities that the ICE undertakes across the year.

It is a testament to the stewardship of the 11-year tenure of director general Nick Baveystock that we end 2022 in a place of strength.

At what was his final trustee board meeting, trustees unanimously offered their sincere gratitude to Nick who will vacate his post early next year.

He leaves behind an institution that is fit for the future and in a very heathy financial position as we start a new era with incoming director general Dr Janet Young.