Strategy 2024

IChemE President Ken Rivers explains the purpose of Strategy 2024 and why it is fundamental to the Institution’s future

TODAY I feel very positive and inspired to be a Fellow of IChemE.

I believe our Institution has truly embraced a more collaborative and cooperative way of working. Our Congress has been tremendous in engaging and representing our members, and members are making a huge contribution towards, and are passionate about, the development of our learned society.

Through consultations and member engagement in 2016 and 2017, our Trustees recognised that we needed to re-emphasise that our Institution’s future was vested in our membership, its networks, its combined knowledge and the passion for the profession. It is encapsulated in the vision of the Institution that is led by members, supporting members and serving society. It was a pivotal moment.

We have been listening, learning and have carefully, with an absolute focus on the good of the Institution and its charitable commitments to wider society, devised a strategy to allow us to collectively contribute in making a very real difference in a rapidly changing world.

We know that chemical engineering matters. Our past contribution to the advancement of society is clear to see in every home, hospital, school, factory and high street across the world.

We have recently marked humankind’s remarkable feats in space 50 years after Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. But we also know that the progress that engineering has enabled has not been without costs to the environment, Earth’s resources and the planet.

We cannot rewrite the past, but what we can do is recognise that chemical engineers will be crucial to addressing the Global Grand Challenges and in helping to shape the sustainable future we want for our children and grandchildren. We cannot do this on our own. We need to work together, find new partners, embrace new ideas and technologies, and work with those politicians, scientists, and activists who share or are open to that view. Only then can we really make our contribution count.

This lies at the essence of IChemE’s purpose, to advance chemical engineering’s contribution worldwide for the benefit of society.

The purpose of IChemE is to advance the contribution of chemical engineering worldwide for the benefit of society

And we can only do that through our members.

Supporting our members is a prerequisite of being a successful Institution. But more can be done.

That’s why we’ve outlined our future direction in Strategy 2024. Launched last month, it sets out a clear path as to how we will advance the contribution of chemical engineering worldwide for the benefit of society.

I see this as a blueprint for five years of development for IChemE. I firmly believe that much like our fast-moving society, it will evolve and will become a living and vibrant programme of work.

Why do we need Strategy 2024?