I am indeed honoured to be speaking to you at this Annual General Meeting. It is one of our institution’s traditions for the president of our learned institution to give the presidential address, and I believe this year’s address is even more special as it comes at the start of what is the true millennium.

Our learned institution has a splendid heritage that we are all able to enjoy. This heritage largely includes benefits to members such as conferences, seminars and short courses at low fees and free technical talks and visits. These have been made possible with the contributions of members of our various committees, council members and particularly our respected past presidents, who have worked hard and sacrificed their time for the organization. We, the new council, have every confidence that we shall be able to continue where they left off and will work to further enhance the image of our esteemed institution.

As I mentioned, many benefits are available to members of our great institution. More than 300 society activities were held at our institution’s headquarters last year. This works out to almost one activity per day. Quite an achievement. Now, if we were to include the activities held by all our ten branches, the number and quality of these events are without doubt extremely impressive.

However, instead of solely concentrating on our achievements, I would like to take this opportunity to address a very pressing issue, the image of engineers. The following are just some of the opinions and statements that I have heard being discussed:

You may also have heard fellow engineers say, on occasion, that they would not recommend their children or their friends’ children take up engineering as a profession.

Well, fellow engineers, are such views a true representation of those held by engineering professionals themselves, and of the general public?

As for the public, I have yet to come across any surveys addressing this issue. However, as for engineers, the IEM has, since 1992, conducted annual surveys on the remuneration and benefits engineers in full employment enjoy, as well as their opinions of the profession. When it comes to the question: Are you satisfied with your job and the financial rewards? The answer, I am happy so say, is a resounding ‘YES’. 60% - 86% of the engineers surveyed are satisfied with their lot.

My fellow engineers, I do not wish to concentrate solely on the status of the image of engineers in the eyes of the professionals themselves, or in those of the general public. I would rather examine the training engineers receive both at university and within the industry and their contributions to society. I would then like to venture some suggestions that we all can all act upon to further improve the image of engineers, regardless of its current standing.

I believe a positive image has to be earned and not demanded. We need to re-examine our contributions to the company or industry that we work for, our contributions to this learned institution, and the well-being of the residents within our neighbourhood, state, country and of course to Mother Nature in the global sense.

If we work to the best of our ability, are disciplined and sincere about improving our engineering skills for the betterment of all, I have no doubt that our professional image will be further enhanced.

I am well aware that we are all volunteers and pay our own transport costs to come to IEM regularly with the aim of helping the council organize activities and help enhance our institution’s culture and traditions. But let me tell you a little about my own experiences.

After I graduated in 1979, I was introduced to IEM by my superior, Ir. Yeoh Beng Ee, who invited me to join his sub-committee. Being the rather shy and timid person, I immediately accepted the opportunity to participate in the committee and have a chance to mix with others outside my work place. This, of course, has broadened my outlook. It has also had a tremendous impact on my career and upon my interpersonal skills.

We engineers are very focused people. Given a task we will organize it, foresee problems and have action plans, including checklists, ready to ensure the task is completed, and it is completed well. Over the years, the only real problem, which I have noticed, is that some members, who would really like to contribute more to our organization, are faced with time constraints, or family or work obligations, which affects their level of commitment.

But why do we come to IEM?

“We come to IEM to help” many of us say. Or more plainly, as I have said: “I don’t come to IEM for the coffee, because let me tell you my secretary Barbara; can certainly make me better coffee. But since I have come here, I shall make full use of my time and tackle the tasks that we committee members, have been allocated, and will concentrate on them and contribute to the best of my ability”. It is that attitude and commitment, I believe, that first got me voted onto the council and has helped me move up the ladder from council, Exco, to vice-president (three times), to deputy-president, right to the very top as your president.

The greatest benefit that I have received from IEM, on a personal level, is the ability to be able to convince or motivate people, or engineers, to work together. I dare say that the fact that my company has been able to flourish, in some part, be attributed to my involvement in IEM. I don’t think I could have managed my company as well as I have done without the exposure and experiences I have acquired while serving this institution. Of course, the other benefits are the satisfaction of contributing to the fraternity and seeing some of the suggestions and contributions being implemented for the benefit of members and the general betterment of the society.

I would now like to discuss several topics relating to the enhancement of the general image of engineers. These include:

Engineering Education for Universities

The traditional education system for engineers has to be improved to include the following aspects, in addition to the engineering fundamentals. IEM has sponsored a study into producing a Model Engineering Education for Universities. The most notable contents that relate to image building are:

Engineering fundamentals are very important. Unless engineering graduates are equipped with sufficient engineering fundamentals, life-long learning will be difficult. A technical grounding is important to ensure the quality of engineering graduates. Hence, the education model proposes to maintain two-thirds of the minimum 120 credit hours for engineering fundamentals.

It has been said that engineers are too technically inclined and introverted socially. We need to change this. Engineering is an intense social activity and engineers today should be well aware of the social dimensions of their work. Engineers have to consider, among others, law, the environment, financial aspects and cost.

All these require a good command of languages and sound communication skills. These skills are particularly important to prepare our engineering graduates for the industry and society. The university curriculum should also include extra-curricular activities to help enhance social, as well as communication and leadership skills.

Courses on health and safety should also be included, in addition to a code of ethics and the role of engineers in society. The use of case studies in these courses would be most effective. All these could be incorporated into our accreditation system. Universities should obtain feedback from the industry on the performance of their engineering graduates so that they can gauge the effectiveness of their curriculum as well as teaching faculty and take remedial action where and when appropriate. IEM’s Technical Division on Education could work with universities on the above matters to help prepare our engineering graduates to meet the future needs of the industry and society.

Training of Engineers & Continuing Professional Development

Engineers should be guided by an organized and supervised training programme to help them realize their full potential and produce quality work with due consideration to the non-technical attributes I mentioned earlier. Of course, IEM would continue to organize society activities to update our members, particularly young engineering graduates.

All graduate engineers’ work, be it analysis, design or construction, shall be checked by their immediate superiors or advisers, to ensure it complies with safety and technical requirements. Any non-conformity should be properly explained and guidance given.

Continuing Professional Development is now a requirement for all new engineering graduates, and it shall soon be made a mandatory requirement for all professional engineers. All these shall lead to a higher quality output with value-added benefits to the public in terms of safety and costs. This will also enhance the image of engineers, as higher quality output will be achieved with little, or no failures due to human error.

Code of Ethics

Engineers, in fulfilment of their professional duties, shall uphold the highest code of ethics. Well, standards vary and depend very much on upbringing. Hence, instead of generalising the codes of conduct and ethics, a more guided interpretation is needed. I have therefore proposed a refinement of our code of ethics.

The code of ethics and rules of practice adopted and modified from National Society of Professional Engineers Virginia, USA, are summarized in Appendix I for your consideration and adoption.

Working with the Media

The media plays a very important role in our society. Hence, engineers should work with the various media forms for better accountability. But how can we achieve that? IEM should respond to the public’s need for information related to engineering issues. Our policy committees on engineering issues such as landslides, soil erosion and the silting of rivers, traffic accidents, environmental protection, the collapse of scaffolding, fire in buildings and so on, should be enlarged to cover other common engineering-related topics. The role of these expert groups is to examine these problems in detail and propose ways to mitigate or overcome them. The opinions of these expert groups could then easily be gathered and released, as the official views of the institution, to the media for public consumption, instead of allowing the publication of views and opinions which may not represent those of our institution. These expert groups were also set up with the intention of formulating policies for the Government’s consideration and implementation for the benefit of society and our country as a whole.

Contributions to Society

As I stated earlier, IEM has done extremely well when it comes to learned society activities and we have well-documented systems, procedures and checklists to suit all purposes. But I believe we should also expand our activities to include other possible contributions to society.

We should further organize and enhance the various policy committees on engineering issues, which I discussed earlier. These committees would then summarize the proposed policies for mitigation or to overcome the problems.

The other matter that we should consider is the stepping-up of our community-engineers’ programme. This programme could be used to assist and encourage more students to take up science subjects at secondary and tertiary level.

Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, I would like to say that I see a great institution in IEM. It is blessed with a great wealth of human resources. We have some 35,000 engineers in this country, although not all of them are members of this learned institution. I believe IEM can provide the lead and direction to the benefit of our society and country. I also see our engineers as being people of good will. Men and women who have warm hearts and who are dedicated to the profession. Let us renew our sense of dedication and commitment and take pride in being engineers and act responsibly to the company that provides us with employment, to our esteemed institution, IEM, as well as to society as a whole. We must be responsible, and be seen to be responsible, because only then will we enjoy the prestigious image such as that enjoyed by our peers in Germany, France and Japan.

Together we can contribute a lot more to both our institution and our country. We need you all to come forward to assist IEM and give it your wholehearted quality support. You are needed by the council particularly the executive committee, and the various other committees involved in improving this institution for the benefit of all.

I would like to conclude this speech by asking each and every one of you to commit and contribute a significant assignment for the benefit of IEM, which in turn will benefit the institution, society and country.

And finally, I would just like to say, “Ask not what the institution can do for you, but what you can do for the institution”.

APPENDIX I

Fundamental Code of Ethics

Rules of Practice