Forging ahead

Members of

and the 

(ICE) have voted to allow their respective Trustee Boards to press ahead with merger talks.

Members of IMechE and ICE have been involved in an early consultation exercise, which closed on 15 July this year. That resulted in 11,541 IMechE members and 9,103 ICE members responding to the question: "Do you support/not support/have no feelings either way to the concept of a combined institution for civil and mechanical engineers?"

The results indicated that 72% of IMechE members supported the concept, 20% did not support it and 8% did not have feelings either way. In all, 51% of ICE members registered their support, 40% did not support and 9% had no feelings either way.

IMechE President, Andrew Ives, commented: “The Trustees were encouraged by the positive position taken by our members and we are pleased that the ICE Council took the same view based on the results of their consultation exercise.

“We have now met with the President of the ICE and his team and we have agreed to start work on a number of significant joint projects to demonstrate that by working together we can make a much greater contribution to the issues of the day.”

The results of the consultation indicated strong support for the continuation of talks from all levels of the membership, with over 82% of Fellows endorsing the proposal. At ICE, the Graduate (Associate) members were the most positive, with 66% in favour of closer ties.