Background

There have been for a considerable time, Institutes and Associations representing professionals from all areas of industry, from architects and structural engineers, to ship builders, teachers, IT professionals, defence staff, through to mechanical and electrical engineers and many more. Perhaps uniquely, for many years, planning engineers and schedulers have not had a body of like-minded people to represent them. The formation of a body to represent planning engineers is long overdue and will bring recognition and credibility to many people who have devoted their careers to planning and scheduling.

For us planning engineers, there is currently little in the way of formal training, qualifications, recognition, publications or even an exchange of ideas. A good number of us are members of other professional bodies, but we have never really felt at home there. Some of us have had some part-time, short training in planning, but on the whole we are largely self-taught.

That's the bad news.

The good news is, that despite these challenges, us planners are here, we are clear logical thinkers, practical people and immensely valued in what we do - planning projects. We have a unique skill - we look into the future, we set out the best way of doing things, we methodically devise time frames, we think about logistics, we set out how procurement will be handled. We are generally very good at what we do.

In the summer of 2004, whilst giving evidence as planning expert witness in a construction litigation trial, Gary France, the founder of the Planning Engineers Organisation, was asked if a professional body existed for planning engineers and regrettably had to answer that there wasn't. The next question was much more difficult to answer "Why isn't there such an body?". It was at that point that Gary France vowed to do something about this and hence the idea of the Organisation was born.

Throughout the second half of 2004, those ideas were turned into reality. The Organisation has a long way to go, but if planners cannot organise this, nobody can!

Gary France
Chairman
The Planning Engineers Organisation