Presidential Review: Restating and Reinvigorating IChemE

Ken Rivers reflects on his 18 months as IChemE President

MY time as President has flown by. It has been a great privilege to serve and I have found the experience immensely rewarding as so many other IChemE volunteers do.

My Presidential Address focussed on leadership, and it has been my huge honour to lead and work with an exceptional Board of Trustees. Their enthusiasm has been infectious and helped to restate and reinvigorate IChemE, along with so many members across the Institution.

I also talked about not being judged by words, but by action. Looking back over the last 18 months, we have made some significant steps on our journey to be an Institution that is led by members, supports members and serves society. The way people have come together to build and align around this vision and support its delivery has been immensely satisfying. To all of you, I would like to say thank you.

Fully-engaged members

To me, it feels there is a renewed sense of purpose and we now have very firm foundations upon which we can build an Institution that is fit for the future.

The Governance Review is complete and members are now more fully engaged in the running of the Institution. We have created a new smaller Board of Trustees that is wholly-elected, and we have established Congress, a member-elected advisory body that is the voice of membership. Congress has got off to an absolutely cracking start and has provided valuable member perspective on a range of subjects from strategy to detailed input on policy. There is a hunger from both the Trustees and Congress members to work together to deliver an Institution that we can all be proud of.

The recently-published Strategy 2024 sets out a clear direction for IChemE, establishes the priorities, and provides a framework for action and delivery. Jon Prichard and the staff team are developing the in-house capability to deliver the strategy together with greater capacity to support members.

All this is going to ensure delivery of our core purposes as a qualifications and standards body and as a learned society. Programme SMART (Sustainable Membership Achieved via Robust Transactions) will streamline our processes and make them more welcoming for people to join IChemE and become Chartered. There have been several successful pilots under this programme, such as reviewing the Accredited Company Training Schemes and the Individual Case Procedure. These will be opened up to the wider membership in 2020.