The Engineering and Technology Board will be established by October this year, and be fully operational by 2002, according to Dr Robert Hawley, chairman of the Engineering Council.
Hawley, who is also chairman of the shadow ETB, comments on the speed of this move: "Many people would say that we have delayed too long before launching radical reform and we must now make up for lost time."

The idea for the ETB came about at a conference earlier this year. But questions have been raised about its aim of broadening its boundaries to include more individuals in the engineering community.

Answering that, Hawley states: "From the results of a review of the industry conducted by Sir Robert Malpas we found that there are at least two million people engaged in relatively high level engineering and technology jobs in the UK.

"Yet of the two million identified, there are only some 200 000 registered UK engineers."

He also points out that a further 400 000 people are members of the institutions, and can therefore be part of the profession, but are not on the current Engineering Council register.

Hawley says that while the ETB focuses on the 'wider community', the Institutions will concentrate on the needs of their members.

However, Hawley adds that there is a continuing need for a regulatory body to in order to maintain standards.

The new regulatory body will be the successor to today's Engineering Council.

"The ETB and the regulatory body will need to be tightly linked so they can benefit from each other. Regulation also needs to be more tightly linked to the work and development of the institutions themselves, so they feel a greater sense of ownership of the regulatory process in the past," comments Hawley.

Using a web-based working group structure, the shadow ETB has been able to involve 200 people from all sectors of the profession, making it easier to meet the October deadline.

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