1 January 0001 - 11 November 2008,
00:00
-
Branch Officers' Conference 2008
The 2008 Branch Officers’ Conference took place on 11 November at the Park Plaza Hotel, Nottingham. The Branch delegates received a number of presentations from IHT officers.
Action Plan 2007 – Chris Jackson, Senior Vice President
Key Points
- Provides a framework, and outlines guiding principles, for Council, Executive Board, the Boards and the Branches
- Raises the profile of the Institution, outlines what we stand for and what we represent, including how we portray that the Institution is for public benefit.
- The six Boards produce work plans in line with the Action Plan
- Branches can produce their own plans. For a Template, email Elizabeth.Winters@iht.org
- Branches are asked to send their completed plans to the IHT Offices. They will then be made available on the IHT Website.
IHT Premises – Brian Murrell, Head of Corporate Services
Key Points
- New IHT Offices are at 119 Britannia Walk, London N1 7JE
- Members are invited to come and visit the new offices
- There are several meeting rooms for hire – larger than at Endsleigh Street. For more information please contact Rebecca.Plumb@iht.org
Key Branch Issues – Geoff Allister, Vice President
Key Points
- The two way communication between the Branches and IHT Offices is very important
- Elizabeth Winters is the Branch Services Officer
- There are designated IHT Officers for Scotland (Scott Dyball), Wales (Amy Napthine) and Ireland (John Smart)
- Branches are encouraged to set up a young members’ committee/group
- Links with universities are important. Branches could consider inviting representatives from local universities to join their committee.
- Some Branches already hold joint meetings with neighbouring branches. This is a good way of sharing ideas and best practice
- IHT provides a Mentor Training session of 2 hours for those interested in becoming mentors for CEng/IEng or TPP candidates. This can be delivered locally to branches. For more information please contact Sue.Stevens@iht.org
IHT Foundation – David Hutchinson, Past President
Key Points
- The Foundation has been created to receive charitable donations from collections and other appeals to distribute to activities and projects that IHT can support as part of its charitable aims
- Collections from the Annual Luncheon and Awards Dinner go towards the fund
- A management committee has been set up under the chairmanship of David Hutchinson. The committee will meet quarterly to consider applications
- The committee is looking for bids that are innovative, encourage the development of skills, involve working with young people or are related to research work (including educational research)
- Any individual or group can apply; however, the Foundation will not fund political parties, political lobbying or non-charitable activities
- Branches are asked to promote the Foundation as much as possible, particularly to younger members. For more information email foundation@iht.org
An Overseas Branch Perspective - Ir. Aik Siaw Kong, Hon Secretary, IHT Malaysian Branch
Key Points
- Branches are asked to keep the contact details of their branch members up to date by sending in any updates to Elizabeth.Winters@iht.org
- At the end of each month, a revised list of members is sent to each branch.
Group Discussion on Five Year Plan
The second part of the morning session was given over to discussions on the 5 year plan. For feedback on the discussions, please see
Group Discussion on 5 year plans
The afternoon sessions were used to discuss a number of key issues that affected the Institution as a whole.
Group Discussion on E-Communication
The following feedback was given following the round table discussions:
- Providing an email address should be compulsory for new members.
- Communication by email can’t be compulsory; it can only be a ‘preferred method’.
- Members would like to choose which mass mails they receive.
- An electronic library was suggested, with text, photos, videos etc.
- Mary Lewis could give a video update on the IHT Website.
- There could also be video archives of major events on the Website.
- Videos of Branch Meetings could be made available on the Website.
- The Transport Portal needs to be up to date.
- IHT on Facebook was raised.
- ‘Members’ Lounge’ sounds old fashioned.
- There could be a page on the IHT Website to help members find hotels to stay in when they are at IHT for meetings.
- There could be a Virtual Branch for members who are abroad temporarily, or for members in remote areas.
- Members could be made more aware of overseas job possibilities.
For the final session, the delegates were split into smaller discussion groups to discuss the following topics:
- Education (including Branch Mentoring, and the TPP)
- Recruitment (including a 5 minute talk from the winning branch of the 2008 Recruitment Awards)
- Web development
If you require any further information on the IHT Branch Officer's Conference, please contact Elizabeth.Winters@iht.org
Action Plan 2007
