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As ACE nears its centenary in 2013 its head of policy and external affairs, Michael Hall, begins a regular look back at the archives to plot its history
The world in 1913 was a very different place to the world today. Tensions were building in the Balkans and military build-up across Europe foreshadowed the First World War to come. It was to be a decade of profound social, economic and political upheaval.
It was against that backdrop that the Society of Consulting Engineers was officially incorporated.
While there are suggestions that the group of men involved started meeting and discussing the industry as early as 1908, the interest group started to consolidate in 1910. It was around that time that figures within the industry began to address issues specific to those engineers that practiced as firms of consulting engineers.
Not surprisingly, and with some resonance for today, one of the first key questions for the formative association was that of eligibility for membership. The ACE was established to address the needs of a small group of what were widely understood to be consulting engineers. However, it settled on a specific definition only after proposing and rejecting several suggestions.
The final version read “A consulting engineer is a person possessing the necessary qualifications to practise in one or more of the various branches of engineering who devotes himself to advising the public on engineering matters or to the designing and supervising the construction of engineering works and for such purpose occupies his own office and employs his own staff, and is not directly or indirectly concerned or interested in commercial or manufacturing interests such as would tend to influence his exercise of independent professional judgement in the matters upon which he advises.”
It is worth noting the implicit commitment to the public good. Sanitation, for example, was one of the major public issues of the day. Bazalgette’s sewer network in London was, at the time, less than fifty years old. Just as today’s engineers are grappling with climate change, engineers of the early twentieth century clearly saw improvement of society as a key role.
There is also the question of independence. A concern raised at that first meeting of the ACE in July 1913 was the need for an organisation that could distinguish independent consulting engineers from those with vested commercial interests in related areas.
Today, as the market for professional services in the built and natural environment evolves, ACE once more finds itself addressing the issue of what it represents. The move to corporate membership in the early twenty-first century was a major shift in emphasis; today’s issues revolve around the nature of modern infrastructure and the services and commercial arrangements demanded by clients.
Archives repeatedly return to other key issue that exercised the first ACE committee members.
Local Authority engineers
One was the emerging trend of local authority engineers acting as consulting engineers.
One particular case involved a Mr Wordington, an employee of the Admiralty, who had been retained by the Corporation of Leeds as a consulting engineer. Mr Wordington was said to have been earning a salary of around £1,100 per year at the time – a handsome sum equivalent to around £80,000 in today’s money.
A second incident involved Bradford Corporation offering engineering consultancy services to mill owners on a wide variety of subjects. Another complaint received by the committee involved the placing of projects in the hands of Scottish local authority employees.
The committee clearly felt that such competition from local authorities was unfair. So it resolved to lobby Parliament and brief the media on the issue.
Taxation
In 2011, the question of taxation largely focuses on income tax, corporation tax, VAT and national insurance. However, the committee of 1913 encountered a worrying threat: taxation of engineers’ fees.
One complaint received by the group concerned Parliamentary agents objecting to paying the “usual and legitimate fee” for expert engineering work, as a result of the taxing of experts’ fees. A correspondent in Scotland also remarked on the taxing of the fees charged by skilled witnesses.
These days, the question of a “usual and legitimate fee” is one governed very much by market forces and the relative competitiveness of firms in the sector. Yet the 1913 records clearly indicate concern over the erosion of incomes in the industry.
This invites parallels with the post-recession concerns of 2011, where a slowdown in public sector investment is likely to put short term pressure on earnings.
So perhaps the world wasn’t so different in 2013.
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