Members are being invited to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting of the CIOB on 24 November 2014 to vote on a resolution to reform the membership structure.
The proposal being put forward is to have four grades of membership, two non-corporate grades, student and applicant and two corporate grades, Member and Fellow. Associate and Incorporate will cease to be used as members leave the grade through either progression or retirement.
The intention behind the proposal, formulated by a Members’ Forum working group, is to encourage more construction professionals to progress to full membership rather than stall their professional development at incorporate (ICIOB) or associate (ACIOB) grade.
However, members who currently hold the ICIOB and ACIOB grades will be able to retain the benefit of the grade and use the post-nominals, subject to continuing to pay their annual subscription fees.
The EGM is being held at 9.30am at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, ahead of the Inspiring the Future of Construction conference.
If passed by a 75% majority at next week’s EGM, the new proposals would take effect from 1 July 2015. Thereafter, all prospective corporate members would be termed “Applicant” and be supported to achieve the criteria necessary for full corporate membership at the earliest possible opportunity.
All members, irrespective of their membership grade, are invited to attend next week’s EGM, although only Members and Fellows will be able to vote on the resolution.
The EGM will be chaired by CIOB president Ghassan Aouad, who may invite members to speak.
A second resolution to be voted on at next week’s EGM proposes the introduction of a “retired” grade of membership, suited to members who wish to associate themselves with the institute but who are no longer practicing in the built environment.
Being officially retired would bring a reduced subscription fee and members could describe themselves as RetMCIOB or RetFCIOB.
The proposals are a development from earlier Members’ Forum proposals published in October 2012 to reform the membership grades with a view to raising the overall professional standing of membership.
At that time, the proposal was to introduce tough time limits (of one to four years) within which ICIOB members would be expected to upgrade – the new plan widens the window considerably.
The earlier plans were considered by the Members Forum in Leeds in 2013, which decided to further study the issue in a full Grade Review. The resulting proposals supported by the Privy Council were put to the Board of Trustees on 30 October 2014, which decided to put the issue to the EGM.
Further details about the EGM can be found by searching ‘EGM’ on www.ciob.org.
