Any amalgamation of professional engineering bodies is another small step in the right direction

The Society of Engineers, the third oldest professional engineering body in the UK, has voted to integrate with the Institution of Incorporated Engineers (IIE) after 150 years of existence. It describes the move as "showing acceptance of change, realism and pragmatism - good attributes of engineers and engineering". Long-time Engineeringtalk readers will know how much I regret the fragmented nature of UK engineering institutions, and how the situation must take part of the responsibility for the profession never having received the status in the public eye which has traditionally been enjoyed by professions which "speak with a single voice" and have single, universally-recognised qualifications and "letters after your name". Any amalgamation is, in the eyes of this observer at least, another small step in the right direction.
I know that most readers are members of a professional institution of one sort or another, and that opinions of them range from the "perfectly-satisfied" (particularly at a local level) to those who see them as no more than a necessary evil. There's no doubt that many of the major ones, with their need for unnecessarily ostentatious premises in the centre of London and their ponderous decision-making processes, do have a public relations problem. But there are some very good people working in all of them, and little by little, things are edging in the direction so many of us would like to see them go.