James Collins is an Operations Manager for a national M&E Contractor and a school governor in Wistow, Yorkshire. James became a school governor using the free governor recruitment service provided by educational charity Governors for Schools . Here he talks about why he decided to get involved, and how his experience as a Building Services Engineer is making a difference to children in his community. Giving back through skilled volunteering As an Operations Manager, the nature of my job is all about the assessment of costs, risks, projecting and forecasting – a lot of which is what governors are there to do. I’d never stopped and thought about how a school is run before I became a governor, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people. Running a school is so much more than teaching children in a classroom. It’s about absolutely everything to do with the school – which is why schools need the support from people in a variety of fields. After staffing co...

Anastasia  Mylona on BBC Breakfast 26 July 2018. This is proving to be a long, hot summer. Wales and Northern Ireland have experienced their warmest June on record, July saw temperatures reach a record level for 2018 of 35.3 degrees in Faversham, Kent, and the Met Office is forecasting a return of heatwave conditions for early August. Prolonged high temperatures, with warm nights, can have adverse effects on the health of some people, particularly older people, young children and those with long-term health conditions. As high temperatures become more prevalent, the average number of heat-related deaths in the UK could potentially more than treble to 7,000 a year by the mid-century, unless the government promotes action to help make our buildings, cities and infrastructure more comfortable and resilient. On 26 July, as the temperature was soaring to its record level  in Faversham, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) coincidentally published the report of an i...

My journey into engineering began with my application to the Arkwright Engineering Scholarship in Year 11. The Scholarships are awarded to 16 year old students who are interested in an engineering-based career, and seek to support the next generation of leaders in ‘engineering, computing and technical design’. Over the Christmas holidays, I completed an online application outlining my achievements and projects so far. I wrote about the chair I had designed and made with 52 biscuit joints and 9 sets of dovetails, and how the process had challenged my problem solving abilities. I also wrote about my interests in the backstage management of school productions, and the different sets and stages I helped to build. The application asked for examples of where I had shown leadership, so I wrote about a Christmas wreath making session I ran whilst volunteering at a local youth club. The application encouraged me to ask myself where I had shown creativity, leadership and practical abi...

What would you tell employers are the most important things about attracting, inspiring and engaging graduate engineers? I believe that we all aspire to be “ better tomorrow than we are today ” and this is instrumental when looking to start a career. The most important thing for employers to attract young talent would be to meet this aspiration by offering opportunities for growth and fostering a continual development culture. Raphael Amajuoyi receives his Graduate of the Year Award The 2017 CIBSE Young Engineers Awards shortlist What do you remember about the evening? The CIBSE graduate of the year 2017 awards evening was a very special one for me. It’s very hard to find one word or sentence that summarises the experience because there was a lot to take in. Arriving at the IMechE around 16:00 for protocol briefing, meeting the competition whilst trying to suppress the nerves was the biggest challenge of the evening for me. I remember getting ready for...

Initially we believed that these Awards were for other people, however, InTandem was encouraged to apply for Employer of the Year by a number of customers after working in partnership with them to raise the level of BEMS knowledge among their mechanical and electrical engineers. We are extremely pleased we did get involved with the Awards as the recognition and connection with Young Engineers has been terrific. Once we got started with the application (an easy process via the on-line form), we realised that the intiatives we implement to develop our own staff’s knowledge and skills were not being as widely adopted by the industry as we had assumed. Most of these methods (industrial placements/internships/mentoring/work experience) are readily accessible to all businesses all over the UK. However, maybe there is little knowledge of such schemes or lack of confidence to engage with them. From our experience over a number of years, we have found that these College/University pl...

The European Parliament approved the final text of the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, or EPBD, on 17th April. First proposed as a part of the November 2016 ‘Clean energy for all Europeans’ package, which consisted of the revisions to the EPBD along with seven other legislative proposals, as well as other actions to help the EU meet its 2030 energy and climate goals. The revision of the 2010 Directive maintains the main features of the existing EPBD whilst it modernises and streamlines some requirements. The changes support European goals and obligations to decarbonise the European building stock as part of the EU response to the Paris Agreement. A major focus of the revision is the transfer of the requirements for a national plan for the renovation of existing buildings from the energy efficiency directive. Whilst this is arguably of limited impact on the UK, because we already have the Climate Change Act and the Clean Growth Strategy, it will still help t...

Is Gross Domestic Product ( GDP) Running on Empty? An opinion piece from Tony Dennis, CEng MCIBSE 18 March 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Robert (Bobby) Kennedy’s speech about the pitfalls of using Gross Domestic Product (GDP and GNP) as a proxy to measure a nation’s success and wellbeing. He stated …. It does not allow for the health of our children…..or the intelligence of our public debate….or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.’[1] Before the United Nations required countries to collect data to report GDP, mid-20th century, the economist and chief architect of GDP, Simon Kuznets, had himself already warned against equating its growth with wellbeing,  ‘T he welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income ’ [2]....

Post Brexit, the Government’s message was that all EU legislation will be copied into domestic UK law to ensure a smooth transition and to avoid a “black hole in our statute book” on the day after the UK leaves the European Union. This was the promise of the White Paper on leaving the EU, which was published in March 2017. To deliver this, the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is the key plank of legislation, which sets out to replace the 1972 European Communities Act. However, ClientEarth, an organisation of activist lawyers committed to protecting the environment, has looked at the draft of the Withdrawal Bill and it has raised some serious concerns that in its current format not everything in EU law will be transposed into UK law. In relation to fully transferring current EU requirements into UK law, there has been a long running issue over the status of the text of Regulations and Directives which precedes the numbered Articles. This text appears in numbered paragraphs kn...