Posts

Showing posts from 2015

The busy season

Image
Hi, well October is now over and we are getting very close to Christmas and the festivities! October has been a great month with so much happening. The 8th October started with a lunch at IMechE with the president Professor Richard Folkson, the ASHRAE President David Underwood, the chief executives and myself. Discussions focused very much around collaboration and a unified voice to government, better collaboration in Universities and education of engineering and science in the schools. The evening saw the Employer of the Year award and the Graduate of the Year award. Congratulations go to SDS who not only won the mid size company award but the overall award. The entries were outstanding as usual but SDS showed great commitment to their programme and staff. The YEN awards were excellent with it being the 20th Anniversary award and we had the pleasure of Kevin Mitrchell of Buro Haoppold who joined us from Dubai who was the first winner. Other previous winners attended to ce

Life behind the scenes

Image
Well, it appears the summer vacations are now truly over, we are in the run up to Christmas (just over 12 weeks) and life continues at 100mph. It has been a great month at CIBSE with all the in house meetings and public events. In the background, HQ is on the go with meetings covering such a wide and diverse range of issues that we seldom give them credit for. Knowledge, finance, technical, membership etc. etc. are constantly being delivered, reviewed, and updated to ensure the intricate clock keeps ticking. As a president, we only tend to cover the perimeter of many of the ongoing issues but the bits I have been involved in have been fascinating and surprising. Where do we go with CEnv? Should Universities cover Heritage issues on their courses? Where do we stand on apprentices? Where do we tie into other Professional Bodies? The list goes on over several hundred e-mails. All demanding an answer and needing to be prioritised to ensure nothing critical falls by the side. 

School's out!

Image
I hope everyone is well after the holiday season. This is always a difficult time for businesses, those who have to go away in school holiday time suffer the premiums that are demanded and those who don’t have to cover the panics that ensue. Staff numbers are always restricted through to the end September and before you know it half term is upon us. I fortunately managed to get a few days off but the weather had no mercy even for a President, so the “to-do list” is no shorter! Winners of the 2014 Young Engineers Awards My CIBSE life might have appeared quiet through August, but we have been working hard behind the scenes on our awards. Having seen the judging for the employer of the year and the undergraduate of the year in this year's Young Engineers Awards , competition is as fierce as ever following record numbers of entries for both. We also saw the award of two other medals - the Napier Shaw and Carter Bronze Medals - to teams from Strathclyde and Malaysia Universiti

The 139 days of Christmas

Image
With half the calendar gone, it’s getting towards that time of year when you stop thinking of 2015 as the New Year, and you start the run up to Christmas ! Luckily for me, I've still got some of CIBSE’s biggest events to look forward to before I can even begin to think about the festive The Young Engineers Awards , the YEN Conference in Hong Kong and, of course, the CIBSE Conference and Exhibition . Th fabulous view across London from the tower of Pimlico District Heating Undertaking It seemed like the world was conspiring against us early in the month, to prevent the launch of our first-of-its-kind Heat Networks Code of Practice. First the Tube strike on the London Underground, and then a record-breaking heatwave, but building services engineers are made of sterner stuff and turned out to fill the sell-out event. A unique opportunity to get under the skin of the UK’s longest running heat network in Pimlico was followed by a really interesting event, which put the new Code

New horizons

Image
CIBSE President Nick Mead reflects on a month of new projects for the Institution The second month of my presidency has been marked by a real opportunity to get stuck into the nuts and bolts of running CIBSE, all around my day job too! I have attended several key governance meetings over the course of this month including the Council, the finance subcommittee and the nominations committee. All a reminder of the tremendous amount of work that goes into running an organisation as large and diverse as CIBSE. I also had plenty of external meetings, building on the theme of collaboration that I hope will define my term as President. Round two of the ‘Three Presidents’ debate between myself and the presidents of RIBA and B&ES took place on the 22 June at RIBA’s offices in London, in a rather more confrontational ‘Question Time’ style than the last. Despite some disagreement over exactly what is holding buildings back (is it old hierarchies, increasing complexity or reluctance to

The collaboration agenda

Image
CIBSE’s newly inaugurated President Nick Mead shares an overview of his first month in office, and sets out some priorities for the future. Welcome everyone to the first of my Presidential blogs, covering my year of office between 2015 and 2016. It’s been a month since I took office, and we have got off to a flying start. I have been looking forward to implementing my primary theme of collaboration, and I have already had the opportunity to talk more about it at over 10 major events so far. And they said it would be easy! I thought I was on the back foot from the start, running against the General Election for attention at the AGM, but I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome at the Royal Academy of Engineering. It was here that I was able to set out my vision of a braver industry more interested in working together and breaking down silos. I also got the chance to formally meet the board and staff at our May away day, a great opportunity to have a conversation about how