Terms of Reference

Background
  • The UK has many organisations representing professional engineers, and some of these have a large body of young members (e.g. members below the age of 30)
  • The organisations are engaged in various activities that: Support professional development of their young members, including attainment of professional qualifications; represent the interest of young engineers within the engineering profession; help young people understand engineering and encourage them to become involved
  • Many of these activities have similar aims and are targeted at overlapping groups of (often young) people
  • There is benefit in the young professionals co-operating to share best practice in their activities and a need for an organized manner of doing so.
  • The Young Professionals Network was established in 2005 to meet this need. To date, several fire engineering young professionals have: Participated in YPN meetings; given presentations on their activities, including summaries of their aims, objectives, execution and outcomes (e.g. recruiting new young members); shared best practice in their activities
This document
  • The purpose of this Terms of reference is to set out: What the YPN does; How it does it; How young fire engineers' members can get involved
  • It is intended as a brief for: Relevant staff of fire engineering organisations; New participants; Other interested parties
Purpose, definitions and principles
  • The YPN is a forum for fire engineering young professionals to share best practice in young member activities The YPN will help fire engineering young professionals: talk to each other about young member activities; learn from each others experiences
  • The YPN is NOT: an engineering organization in its own right; a group that organizes young professionals activities directly. However, it may be that YPN participants co-operate in organizing activities as a result of YPN discussions
  • The engagement of Young Professionals in the YPN is entirely voluntary.
Function
  • Essentially, the YPN will hold one meeting a year, and invite all interested young professionals'.
  • Representatives may wish to give presentations about their organisations activities, or simply attend to hear presentations by other young professionals.
  • The YPN also has a website, mentoring scheme and electronic discussion group
Meeting arrangements
  • The YPN meetings will be organized when the need arises.
  • The YPN Secretary will advise representatives at least one month in advance of meeting
  • Representatives wishing to present at meetings should ideally contact YPN chairperson at least one week before.
  • It is preferable for representatives unable to attend to arrange substitutes
  • YPN Secretary to circulate minutes after meetings.
Management Roles
  • The YPN will be managed by two or more people fulfilling the following roles:
  • Chairperson: He or she will: receive representatives' offers to speak at meetings; devise meeting agendas; host and chair meetings
  • Secretary: He or she will: maintain a simple database of YPN members; invite members to meetings; make administrative arrangements for each meeting, including booking a room, setting up projection facilities and organizing refreshments
Representative Role
  • Representatives may be either: Members of YPN; Staff of IFE
  • The representatives role is to: present YPN at meetings; manage related correspondence
  • For a representative to be effective, is it expected that he/she will be: Actively engaged in young professional activities; Willing to share experiences in these activities with other representatives
  • Unless they are staff members, representatives are expected to be unpaid volunteers
Resourcing
  • It is hoped that organisations will support the YPN in two ways: provide suitable seminar rooms for the meetings, including projection facilities and refreshments, free of charge. Meetings will be held at different organisations offices; reimbursing their members for T&S costs incurred by them attending the meetings and acting as representatives
Engagement and participation
  • Key to YPN success will be its sustained engagement of young fire engineering professionals
  • It is important that the secretary is able to make contact with all representatives readily. All contact details must therefore be up to date; should an organisations representative change, the secretary is notified
  • It is important that the representatives understand their role, as described above