Abstract
The InstMC’s North of Scotland Section is currently enjoying a resurgence of technical event attendances after moving to a regular, modern meeting room within Aberdeen city centre, coupled with the growing number of engineers coming to work in this ever-expanding UK North Sea Oil and Gas hub of project activity, which will extend the life of this industry by another 30–40 years.
North of Scotland technical events are now fully programmed through until the end of 2013 and have been inserted into the InstMC’s website events calendar, and thus, into the M/C Journal’s back page listings – through the assistance of Gower Street, London.
Young engineers see the InstMC’s technical lectures as an aid to increasing their ‘continuous professional development (CPD)’ knowledge. We would therefore particularly like to encourage more graduate engineers, employed by Aberdeen-based companies, to join our audiences, and to also take a look at the Institute as being their future choice of fully licensed sponsor for Engineering Council United Kingdom (ECUK) professional registration to help build their engineering careers, which can now be reasonably expected to last for their lifetimes in this particular energy sector alone.
A number of new InstMC membership applications are already coming through, from InstMC Gower Street, for our professional review interview (PRI) process. This would therefore also be an appropriate time to appeal for more fully qualified, Aberdeen-based, InstMC members to consider offering their kind assistance with some of the new membership/registration interviews. We naturally wish to progress these applications in a timely manner.
With the above developments already in place (through the efforts of a dedicated, small local Committee core team), the North of Scotland Section has ambitions to now progress further. For this to be achieved, however, we would like to invite further volunteers, from among the local membership, to join our committee to help organise more ambitious and beneficial engineering events beyond the already successful, regular monthly meetings.
Although the technical meetings programme pauses for a summer recess during the months of June, July and August, the committee team still maintains contact and can often meet on the regular monthly schedule dates. Thus, there remains a vehicle for new people to come and discuss matters of membership and to gain advice and assistance with their application forms, if required.
The expansion of energy-related engineering work in Scotland is highlighting a national skills shortage that endangers further expansion of engineering projects. The Institute can, however, play its part here towards improving engineering knowledge and helping to increase technical competences, through its events, recruitment of members, and professional registrations, now that we can see potentially expanding long-term employment prospects for all suitably qualified engineering practitioners of all ages and experience levels.
Chairman - Martin Belshaw:
Stuart Mitchell -