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A MESSAGE to MEMBERS and POTENTIAL MEMBERS

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With some 70,000 members, Engineers Australia is one of this country's largest professional associations. EA serves the interests of all members of the engineering team, including Professional Engineers, Engineering Technologists and Engineering Associates.

Involvement and Democracy

With one voice in seventy-thousand, how can you be heard? How can you ensure that your Institution will best meet the needs of your career? How can you fully draw upon the services that are provided from your subscription? The answer is contained in one word - involvement.

Remember that involvement is a most rewarding experience. It is well known that the more you put in, the more you get out.

However, some members may balk at finding where they best fit in. The structure of our Institution might seem like a confusing array of Divisions, Colleges, Societies and the various sub-groups that serve all these. But such complexity only reflects the diversity of our profession, the personalities of our large volunteer workforce, and EA's proud history of accommodating the needs of its active participants.

Despite this complexity, a visit or phone call to any Division office would quickly identify your common-interest group. Through involvement with this group you could attend technical meetings, receive publications, meet prospective employers / employees or colleagues, explore opportunities, discuss issues and enjoy social activities. In short, you could learn important things, become known, make friends, and exert an influence.

Divisions follow geographic boundaries and maintain a staffed and equipped local office, providing amenities and support to members. Colleges are custodians of professional competency standards in the various engineering disciplines (such as biomedical, environmental, information, civil, etc). Societies are industry-based groups (such as manufacturing, aerospace, fire safety, etc), any of which may involve several disciplines. Effectively the Divisions, Colleges and Societies each operate along one axis of a three-dimensional matrix, reminiscent of a solved Rubick's Cube. Being positioned throughout the body of this matrix, the various common-interest groups within EA gain access to their sponsoring Division, College and/or Society according to need.

You may want to read the above paragraph twice. Various attempts to simplify the structure, or simplify the explanation, have been underway for some time.

All these entities are governed by volunteer office-bearers who are elected from the membership at large, or from the involved groups of members operating at the grass-roots level. Facilities and staff support are provided to each of these entities, within budget constraints.

This brings me to reflect upon the workings of democracy in EA and to consider how this could be enhanced into the future.

The existing structure for national office-bearers was established by a postal ballot of the membership in 1997. This structure seeks to provide the optimum balance between (A) having a small executive board that is capable of timely decisions on the complex issues facing our dynamic profession, and (B) having an elected body sufficiently large to ensure that all substantial interest groups within EA feel represented.

Therefore we have a 9-member Council comprising six Vice-Presidents, a Deputy President, the President and the immediate Past President, all of whom have been elected by a Congress. Each Vice-President is responsible for a portfolio under the Engineers Australia Strategic Plan - Education & Assessment, Engineering Practice, Young Engineers & Recruitment, Public Policy & Representation, Marketing & Communications, and Finance.

The Congress includes all Councilors and is composed of 12 representatives directly elected by the membership at large, plus a representative of each Division Committee and each of the 8 Colleges, and representatives from prescribed groups including Societies, Technologists, Associates, Young Engineers, Women in Engineering and overseas members. A total of 46.

Modern business practice holds that such a large group would be unwieldy in the task of setting EA policy and budgets. So instead, Congress performs a valuable representational role in providing advice and counsel to Council, particularly on issues that may be put to a vote of the membership at large. Such issues would involve a change to the Royal Charter, Bylaws or Code of Ethics. Even more importantly, the virtue of this group is that it provides the forum for evaluating the talent of Council candidates.

In conclusion I warmly encourage you to become more involved in EA activities and even to seek the rewarding experience of election to a position on the most appropriate group that serves your professional and social needs. Please refer to Engineers Australia Magazine and/or contact your local Division Office for more information.

Dr Martin Cole, FIEAust, CPEng
National President, 2000 & 2001