Incredibly, it will be a year tomorrow that I took over as President of the Institution and started this blog which I hope you have all enjoyed reading. I will be saying thanks tomorrow in various ways as I hand over the Presidency to Professor Bill Banks (another Strathclyde graduate and Scotsman!). To all of you who connect to this blog I would like to send a particular thanks as I have appreciated the many thousands of you that have read it, and those of you who have made some interesting comments. In my view the key challenges for engineering have not changed during my Presidency and remain energy and sustainability, transport, environment and more poignantly in recent weeks the effect of natural disasters on the poorer parts of the world. Only engineers can provide the solutions in all these circumstances and we still do not have enough coming into the profession in the UK. It is particularly appropriate that the incoming Preident, Bill Banks, will be pursing the theme of education. This allied with the work by our Marketing & Comms Team will identify how we can better activate the wider public with regard to engineering will contribute to the delivery of the IMechE Vision: Improving the world through engineering. Finally, it has been both a great privilege and pleasure to be your President for a year and I will continue to support the Institution wherever I am able to do so in the future. Comments can still be made via the blog and will be passed on to me.

Yours aye John