President's Message - February 2015
Members of our Division, it is both an honour and a privilege to be able to serve you during 2015 in representing your interests and in the promotion of our profession throughout our community.
Our profession is an important contributor to our society’s quality of life and our organisation is constituted to advance the science and practice of engineering for the benefit of the community.
A number of important organisational initiatives have come to fruition this year.
The former Board of Engineering Practice (BoEP) is now known as the Learned Society Advisory Committee (LSAC) and the new College of Leadership and Management has commenced from 1 January. I encourage your participation.
We are promoting Innovation and Entrepreneurship this year in the Division and will be holding our first workshop on 25 February in the Sydney CBD focusing on the journey from an “idea” to its commercial reality. An impressive range of speakers have been assembled and event Details are available on our website and I would encourage you to attend. I commend the event to you.
An important event affecting the governance of our organisation is occurring this month. From 20 February members will be given the opportunity to vote in a Ballot (Ballot 2015) to modify our Charter and By-laws and in so doing updating our governance arrangements to reflect current best practice.
There are four resolutions covering election of Board members, rationalising the size of Congress, remuneration of future directors and relax restrictions on qualifications for the CEO position. These areas, after extensive consultation with office bearers around the nation, were identified as requiring change to better follow corporate governance best practice.
- The first resolution involves the Board being drawn from the whole membership, the numbers reduced to six, longer terms and the Chair being elected by fellow Board directors. This alignment with corporate best practice will ensure a wider pool of eligible nominees and with longer terms allow enhanced contribution over the director’s term.
- The second resolution rationalises the Congress size to thirty seven. This still incorporates Divisional, College, overseas and group representations however as Director positions are available to any member this Congress pool can be reduced.
- The third resolution relates to remuneration of future directors. This simply reflects standard commercial practice to compensate those who take on a significant time commitment and fiducial responsibility.
- The fourth resolution lifts significant restrictions on the qualifications for the job of CEO. By relaxing the restriction of being a Fellow is to be relaxed, however engineering qualifications will be still required.
Further information, including for and against cases, can be found on our website.
I encourage members to participate in the Ballot process and vote yes to ensure our governance practices are aligned to best practice.
I am looking very much this year to consolidating the positive transformations recently achieved in the Division and working effectively with the Division Committee and with staff ably led by Steve Finlay.
Bruce Howard FIEAust CPEng
President, Engineers Australia, Sydney Division
Photo: Bruce Howard, EA Sydney President at Engineering Excellence Exhibition launch with NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Professor Mary O’Kane and Director of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Rose Hiscock. The Launch was held at Powehouse Museum on 6 February 2015.
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