Ensuring Engineers Australia and the profession are future-ready, increasing the organisation’s public impact and amplifying the benefits of membership for business and career success are all part of Engineers Australia’s vision for the future, write National President Chris Champion and CEO Dr Bronwyn Evans.
How did Engineers Australia develop Vision 20|20+3, our strategy for the next three years? The short answer is: thoroughly.
The foundation included qualitative and quantitative research, as well as consultation with members, volunteers and employers. Our team considered long-term trends and aspirations and worked to identify medium-term priorities to deliver desired outcomes.
The advent of COVID-19 has put a rocket under our digital delivery plans. This June, almost 20,000 people registered for our webinars — more than double the registrations for in-person events the previous June.
Other recent developments include our website member service “live chat”, EA OnDemand videos, and adoption of the Engineering Heroes podcast.
We are working with the profession regarding COVID-19, including through our member research, CEO roundtable sessions, and statistical analyses, and have developed COVID-19 Recovery: A 9-point plan, which is available online.
As we navigate the current challenging environment, Engineers Australia has a strong member base, numbering more than 100,000 members at the end of 2019–20.
This included a record 26,400 Chartered members, representing over seven per cent year-on-year growth.
As a professional home for life, including during challenging times, we offer generous fee concessions for people in financial difficulty.
Our Vision 20|20+3 strategy works across three main areas:
The engineering profession
Ensuring Engineers Australia and the profession are prepared for the future, including through continuing professional development, credentials, our Learned Society, international agreements and, increasingly, “micro-credentials”. It’s also about having impactful leadership in the media, and with government, so the community benefits on, for example, the vital issue of climate change.
Our membership
We will work to further increase the value that the profession and employers put on membership and credentials, moving towards having all engineering professionals aspire to be Chartered. Part of that will include increasing our relationships with employers, such as our recent agreement with the Royal Australian Navy.
Our organisation
We seek to be a high-performing organisation that is easy to do business with, including by delivering services efficiently and effectively, and continuing to build on our culture to make it more customer focused. An example is our recent streamlining of the online process to apply for membership, which halved the number of steps required.
In the pages of create this month, as always, you’ll see plenty of examples of inspiring engineering work: technology to help people with serious mobility issues, a sewer inspection robot and a COVID-19 hospital built in just five weeks.
For us as leaders of Engineers Australia, these are a welcome reminder that, even though our organisation needs to keep changing and improving, our core purpose after more than a century remains unchanged: to advance the science and practice of engineering for the benefit of the community.
See Vision 20|20+3 online at https://bit.ly/2ZrzIga
