At its annual strategy day, trustees met with the ICE’s executive directors to discuss the ICE’s 2025 plan, with a focus on the organisation’s global footprint and the future of ICE knowledge offering.
At its annual strategy day, trustees met with the ICE’s executive directors to discuss the ICE’s 2025 plan, with a particular focus on the organisation’s global footprint and the future of the ICE knowledge offering.
State of the Institution
To set the context for the day’s discussion, the director general, Janet Young, gave a short presentation outlining the organisation’s current positioning, including a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis for the ICE Group.
The ICE is well positioned to deliver the 2024 plans and it was helpful to hear how the executive are working to harness the opportunities available and mitigate the weaknesses and threats, including how we collaborate more with other institutions or organisations.
It was discussed how the ICE can enhance different communication channels to further improve member engagement.
Global footprint
Senior Vice President Jim Hall led a discussion on the ICE’s international strategy, posing a series of questions to the trustees about the ICE’s global positioning and future ambitions.
The ICE’s strategy is a strategy for all members wherever in the world they are based.
While the organisation is seen as a global player, more work needs to be done to ensure we are working across the global membership with the right partners to deliver against our goals.
Collaboration on projects such as PAS2080:2023 demonstrate the leading role the ICE can and should continue to play in the built environment.
Trustees agreed that we should be doing more to leverage PAS2080:2023 internationally.
Sustainable Development Goals
In 2023, we were delighted to qualify our first Chartered Infrastructure Engineer, the first new title for the ICE in over 200 years.
The suite of infrastructure engineer qualifications is a great opportunity for the ICE to further diversify its membership base and cement its positioning as the home of infrastructure.
Trustees agreed with the plan to focus on engaging with employers in the coming year to raise awareness of the opportunities presented by the new qualifications.
Future of Knowledge
The way people are consuming information is constantly changing, and our members are no different.
The director of engineering knowledge, Mark Hansford, provided recommendations on how the ICE can adapt its knowledge offering to make it more effective in the future.
Trustees then discussed the proposal and agreed that we should learn from the success of PAS2080:2023 and investigate a shift in direction to focus more on codes and standards and less on one-off reports.
Looking ahead
The ICE has made great strides in recent years championing sustainable, resilient and inclusive infrastructure, but we must continue to evolve and ensure we maintain the leadership position.
That means being more strategic in how we communicate with our members and key stakeholders, and revaluating who we partner with.
The strategy day is just the start of these conversations and I look forward to continuing to work with the ICE staff on these important areas in the coming year.
