23 Blane – the perfect candidate for the role! It’s no secret that London’s Palace of Westminster is undergoing an extensive refurbishment and renewal project. What you may not know, however, is that an IET volunteer is chairing the independent expert panel overseeing the works across all 17 buildings in Westminster’s Parliamentary Estate. Project Manager and IET Fellow Ugbana Oyet approached the IET and a small number of other professional institutions to ask them to nominate a volunteer member with the required expertise and knowledge to join the panel. The IET had the perfect candidate in one of our Fellows, Blane Judd, who already chairs the IET Built Environment Panel (BEP). Blane, who now chairs the Westminster panel, said: “Through advice and guidance, the panel looks to provide a long-term strategic view of the estate-wide refurbishment and renewal programme. We’ve been looking at human factors, like air quality, and at the functionality of building services. “ As Chair of the IET BEP, I have early sight of new technologies and how they are developing. This insight has proved really useful to the Westminster panel when exploring how new technologies can be incorporated within the overall programme of activities at Westminster – for example, ensuring that the estate has an electric vehicle infrastructure to match London’s low-emission ambitions.” At two to three days a month, the Westminster panel represents a big volunteering commitment, but Blane has no regrets: “My whole ethos is around supporting and developing people within the engineering community and wanting to see excellence in engineering. If I can encourage and be a part of that, I feel I’m contributing appropriately to my profession.” TEAMWORK Rich Blair, Lauren Aves and Lily Welch set up an IET On Campus student group at the University of Greenwich Medway Campus in July 2017. Since then, they have worked together to inspire, inform and influence engineers of the future – from schoolchildren to university students. The team has hosted many IET events in Kent, including designing and delivering STEM workshops for young people, participating in the UK’s Year of Engineering events, and running GEEK Fest workshops. Through IET On Campus recruitment workshops, the team has encouraged colleagues at other universities, colleges and schools to consider IET membership benefits, and IET scholarships and bursary schemes. This activity has inspired more than 120 students to enrol with the IET On Campus – and around a third have gone on to become active STEM Ambassadors. Delighted to have won our award for Teamwork, Lily said: “I think we work well as a team, because we are all very driven and strive for the best outcome.” Lauren added: “We are very lucky to have had the opportunity to be something more as students. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without behaving as a team from the get-go.” Rich said: “There are thousands of IET volunteers around the world, so to think that as students we could achieve this sort of recognition is really quite something.” This is not the first of the students’ successes within the IET. Rich is one of our Engineering Horizon Bursary recipients supported by the Exilarch’s Foundation, and the team have also won our 2018 On Campus Group of the Year Award (see page 26). Nominated by Philip Moffitt MSc CEng MIET, who said: “I nominated this team because, from the moment that I met them, they struck me as great examples of what an engineering collaboration needs if we’re to meet our future challenges.” IET On Campus team: (from left) Lauren Aves, Lily Welch and Rich Blair Blane Judd CEng FIET outside Place of Westminster, UK Round two of the 2018 awards is now open - visit www.theiet.org/volunteer-values-awards to make your nomination before 31 December. November 2018 – Member News www.theiet.org/volunteers