Report on a presentation given by Justin Mingaye 25 September 2012.
Justin Mingaye is the Regional Development Manager for West Midlands and Wales. He delivered a talk ”Who are the IET? What can the IET do for you?” at the Ruxton Technology Centre, Staffordshire University, on 25 September.
He prefaced his talk by emphasising that his background is in marketing, rather than engineering, but his talk clearly demonstrated knowledge of what the IET has as the central aims. Justin has seven networks within his region including our network, and is the interface between us and Savoy Place.
Justin has a key role in establishing contact with engineering and technology businesses, academic institutions and training providers across the region in order to exploit the services available from the IET and is already gaining a commitment from companies to formalise their engagement with the IET by becoming Corporate Partners, through a scheme rolled out in August.
Justin asked the audience what the main selling points should be when encouraging engineers to join the IET. Two reasons emerged:
1. The need to have IET membership and CEng as a licence to practice required by some industries. It was recognised that in the UK this was limited.
2. The help the IET can give for continued professional development (CPD). The website, library, national and local seminars and events.
A question was posed as to why we in our network had received very few referrals from engineers seeking mentoring. Justin admitted that the take-up seems patchy across the UK. One reason is thought to be the reticence of engineers to admit to anxieties, especially if names of colleagues were involved. It was suggested from the audience that mentoring should not be just helping members to achieve CEng which seems to be the perceived role but to help the development of engineers in their careers. In small companies mentoring from a peer group or from non line managers was limited and in some cases non existent. The IET could help.
In answer to another question asking why the IET did not take a stronger line with the issue of successive governments’ allowing our hard won expertise in many areas of engineering to be sold off to foreign organisations. Justin intimated his intention to seek an answer, since this was outside his operational activities. In answer to another question he gave an account of some of the recent initiatives aimed at encouraging more young people to aspire to engineering careers. Although aimed chiefly at producing more technician engineers with little mention of chartered engineers, there was general approval by those attending.
The question of increasing the involvement of schools and colleges with the IET was raised. Justin said that he had not visited the local colleges (Stafford, Newcastle, Stoke) due to limitations of time. On further discussion the idea of asking the younger members to visit local schools emerged. This is to be discussed at a committee meeting and noted and encouraged by Justin.
Mr Don Brown, consultant to the IET, gave a short talk about the re-vamped Benevolent Fund, which has now been re-titled IET Connect. A recent review of this service revealed that the kinds of help sought by members had been changing, and widening, resulting in recognition that many circumstances did not need the residential care provided for many years at the care home owned by the IET. In 2010 Spiers House was transferred to a private provider, thus releasing a substantial number of IET staff, who have been able to devote more time towards advising members seeking help with such diverse difficulties as legal advice, redundancy and financial assistance among other distressing problems.
This significant change came as a surprise to most of those attending, and there was unanimous approval of the outcome