I’ve just let my IMarEST membership lapse as the new company won’t pick up the fees.
I never bothered with IEEE / IET membership, it's pretty much irrelevant as far as I can see in Telecoms.
I'm a FIMechE and begrudge the money every year. Even though work pays... But it's a taxable benefit so it actually costs me at the end of the day.
Most posters are finding their Institution to not be worthwhile. I'll put a counter view; professional bodies have many benefits, if they are effective. Not all may be effective.
Declaration: I've been heavily involved in IStructE, starting from working in a regulated industry where there was business value in showing the regulator that we had competent people.
My hypothesis is that professions differ from trades in that the customer has to trust the professional. Most people will recognise bad joinery, or bad brickwork. Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, etc, you need to know you can trust them.
So engineers set up Institutions to give the public confidence. IStructE's Charter is clear that it exists for public benefit - the members only benefit indirectly. Some professional bodies, I think, have allowed themselves to become defenders of their members, to the detriment of the public.
@13thfloormonk says, in effect, that being Chartered would force them to work to a quality level that the business can't support. That's not a position anyone should be put in, but it happens. The value of good engineering is often not visible in the short term. Clients and Directors don't recognise that. Might the Grenfell Tower tragedy have been avoided if they did?
I learned a lot from being involved in IStructE, and what I learned definitely helped my career. Some was technical, some was just from meeting people from other parts of the industry and getting different perspective.
IStructE does a lot to develop and raise standards, but most of that is invisible to people who are not involved. It's more international than many, which may help.
What are the problems that prevent Engineering Institutions being seen as worth supporting?
- Their role in providing technical guidance has reduced. Pre-internet, publishing useful guidance was only feasible for a well funded organisation, now it can be found anywhere; but there's a risk that it may not be reliable. Formal standards (BS, EN, IEC etc) now have more detail than they used to - but many of them are drafted with support from Institutions.
- Employers are more demanding of their engineers, so they don't have time to get involved in Institutions. Is that true? It used to be necessary to travel to technical meetings, now many are online.
But if not through Institutions, how can the value that good engineering adds be made visible? Will it take more tragedies like Grenfell Tower? Will individual engineers be prosecuted because they bowed to pressure to cut corners?
