15 Mar 2022
Engineering New Zealand is reviewing its Board structure and governance rules, to see what changes we can make to better serve our members.
An external report from Dr Jo Cribb late last year has recommended changes to the way our Board is appointed and how it operates. We’re now considering these recommendations and will be consulting members on a set of proposed changes later in the year. We welcome your feedback on Dr Cribb’s report and what changes you’d like to see.
Background
Our Board has a complex role. It governs a medium-sized organisation and complex system of sub-committees, leads the wider engineering profession and supports members’ needs.
Governance structures for any organisation should be reviewed regularly to ensure they are fit for purpose. We reviewed the Engineering New Zealand Rules in 2018-19 but deliberately set aside the governance aspects to be reviewed separately.
The Governance Review began in late 2021 when we commissioned an external report from Dr Jo Cribb, who conducted a desk-based review of governance documents and interview-based audit of current governance arrangements, to deliver a set of recommendations.
External report : : Dr Cribb's recommendations
Dr Cribb’s report found a number of things are working well, including:
- Engineering New Zealand is financially sustainable
- the Board champions career development and diversity and inclusion
- the branch structure provides an important networking function
- we take our standard-setting and chartership processes seriously, and
- excellence in engineering is celebrated.
Dr Cribb recommends changes in the areas of governance, leading the profession, and supporting members’ needs. Recommendations include:
- amending our election processes to ensure get the right governance capabilities on our Board
- reducing the Board to eight members, including independent (non-member) positions and an emerging director position
- considering whether Board positions should be paid instead of voluntary, and
- reconsidering the current rule that Senior Office Holders must be Fellows.
Whats next
We’ve already implemented some of Dr Cribb’s recommendations, like asking Board election candidates to speak about their governance experience in their candidate profiles. We also recently appointed an additional Board member to meet a need for increased cultural capability around the Board table.
Some of Dr Cribb’s recommendations will require changes to our Rules, and we’ll be consulting with members before putting forward a series of proposed changes ahead of next year’s AGM. Keep an eye out for more information about these proposals.
In the meantime, if you have feedback on the report or the Governance Review, you can send it to hello@engineeringnz.org with the subject “Governance Review”.
