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History of the Academy
1991–1996: From Fellowship to Royal Academy
In 1991 Sir Denis
Rooke was succeeded as President of The
Academy by one of the principal architects
of the fundraising appeal, Sir William
Barlow FREng. By then The Fellowship had
developed a carefully targeted portfolio of
programmes and, having played a major role
in the development and expansion of CAETS in
the late 1980s, it was highly regarded
internationally. Its distinguished
membership, drawn from all branches of
engineering, regularly advised and
increasingly provided evidence to
parliamentary Select Committees and to
government inquiries on contemporary issues.
In 1992 its prestige and success in
promoting engineering excellence were
recognised when, with the grant of a Royal
title, it became The Royal Academy of
Engineering.
From the very start of his term
of office in July 1991 Sir William set out
to raise the profile of The Academy further
and to enhance its influence, especially
with Government. He used his past experience
to gain access to Cabinet Ministers, junior
Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, many of
whom were encouraged to participate actively
in Academy events. He instigated a policy of
presenting high profile lectures and
subjects at Academy events in order to
promote excellence in engineering to a broad
spectrum of people. This style of presidency
was exemplified by a dinner at Guildhall in
the City of London for Fellows on 2 July
1992, held to celebrate the grant of the
Royal Title and attended by the Senior and
Royal Fellows, the President of the Board of
Trade, Ministers, senior Civil Servants and
representatives of the City, industry,
academia and overseas academies.
This was
followed in September 1993 by The Academy's
first Presidential Address, given by Sir
William, entitled National Prosperity: The
Role of the Engineer. The second
Presidential Address, also given by Sir
William, marked the 20th Anniversary of the
founding of The Academy. It was held in
April 1996 at Guildhall and was attended by
the Royal Fellow, the Secretary of State for
Science and Technology, other VIP guests,
Fellows and their personal guests.
Meanwhile, thanks to the success of the
Appeal, The Academy was able to acquire more
substantial accommodation at 29 Great Peter
Street, Westminster. After extensive
internal refurbishing, particularly to
provide quality meeting and seminar rooms,
The Academy moved in at the end of March
1994. For the first time The Academy was
housed in high-quality headquarters
providing vastly improved facilities which
were consistent with its enhanced status.
Its influence, meanwhile, was increasingly
felt at European as well as national level.
The Academy played an instrumental role in
setting up the
European Council for Applied
Sciences and Engineering (Euro-CASE),
founded in 1992. The same year also saw the
four major national expert bodies, The
Academy, The Royal Society, The British
Academy and the Conference (now Academy) of
Medical Royal Colleges coming together to
create the National Academies Policy
Advisory Group (NAPG), to address broad
contemporary issues drawing upon the
combined expertise of its constituent
members.
The Academy contributed fully to
the consultations for the 1993 science White
Paper, Realising Our Potential, successfully
arguing that existing research funding
arrangements through the DTI and the SERC
should be replaced by a new research
council, to better co-ordinate
engineering-related research. This, the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC), came into being in 1994.
The Academy also emphasised that research
strategies should support industry and
wealth creation, objectives which were
written into the mission statements of the
new research councils created following the
White Paper. The Academy was a key advocate
of regular ‘technology foresight’ exercises,
intended to advise on future technology
requirements. This had, after all, been a
founding objective of The Academy; indeed,
it had been developing its own programme to
identify future key technologies while the
White Paper was being prepared. In the event
Fellows of The Academy took a very full part
in the government's
Technology Foresight
exercise in 1994 and beyond.
A new activity,
encouraged by Sir William, was the bringing
of The Academy's expertise to bear on
current issues. One example was energy
policy. In 1994 The Academy addressed this
by analysing the different energy strategies
adopted in France and the lessons that might
be learnt. Another was safety of roll-on
roll-off ferries; some of the
recommendations of The Academy's
pronouncement on this subject have since
been incorporated into policy. This was
followed in 1996 by the publication of a
Statement on the Construction Industry which
highlighted lessons learned from good
practice in manufacturing industry which
could usefully be adapted to the
construction environment.
Another initiative
was the introduction of a new award, the
Silver Medal, to recognise outstanding
contributions to British engineering,
leading to market exploitation, by engineers
under the age of fifty. Up to four medals
are awarded annually. The first
presentations were made in 1995.
Meanwhile
The Academy continued its engineering in
medicine initiatives, culminating in the
founding in 1993 of the
UK Focus for
Biomedical Engineering. In addition further
work was undertaken as a result of the 1990
Management of Technology Study, in which one
of the issues was the critical role of
effective development and use of human
resources. This led to further investigation
and the report People Manufacturing Success
in 1995. The report underlined the
importance of companies appreciating the
benefits which would flow from fully
developing staff and relating them to their
own business activities.
At the same time
The Academy was developing
Engineering
Professional Development Awards, introduced
in 1994. In contrast to the
Panasonic Trust,
which addresses the professional development
needs of individual engineers, these are
administered by companies, and firms
applying for funding have to show the
relationship between their training
proposals and business plans.
Another
related and continuing concern was the need
to promote better links between higher
education and industry. One important
development was the replacement of the
existing Industrial Secondment Scheme, which
had proved its value as a means of providing
industrial experience for academic
engineers, with a much more extensive
programme, launched in 1995. The number of
personal research chairs and senior research
fellowships continued to expand. By 1996
there were ten chairs and five fellowships
supported by industry. In 1996 The Academy
co-sponsored with the EPSRC a further series
of research chairs in innovative
manufacturing, which stemmed in part from
The Academy's recommendation that industrial
investment in long-term developmental
research should be encouraged. There were
also nine Clean Technology Research
Fellowships, introduced in 1994 and funded
jointly with the Clean Technology Unit of
the EPSRC.
Both the funding and the existing
programmes of The Academy meanwhile expanded
steadily. The schools programme of the
Continuum covered the whole country by 1995.
In the same year leadership awards, to train
promising undergraduates for management,
were launched. By 1996 numbers on the
pre-university programmes had reached nearly
2000, and over 500 companies were involved
in the Continuum. Similarly, by 1996 there
were 106
Visiting Professors in Principles
of Engineering Design in 35 universities.
The success of the scheme to send engineers
to Japan meanwhile led the DTI to expand the
scheme, so that it involved a range of
scientists and technologists in addition to
engineers, and offered secondments to other
developed economies including Japan.
However, its expansion beyond the field of
engineering meant that The Academy could no
longer be involved in its administration.
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