What’s a white paper then?
BY now you will have seen our most recent white paper, ‘Transforming the Civil Engineering Surveyor’. I was asked, ‘What makes it a white paper, why isn’t it a green paper?’
Government use these terms differently to the commercial world. You may have thought that a white paper was a non-peer-reviewed opinion piece. An excuse for the marketing team to make their sales pitch seem fancy. Sometimes this is true.
From the institution’s point of view as a chartered institution and registered educational charity our white papers are slightly more academic and are indeed peer-reviewed. The scrutiny is based internally on our volunteer member’s skills and expertise and the expertise of our trusted friends of other pockets of our network within the industry.
Keep your eyes and ears open for the next call for a working party and bring your expertise to help us really shape our industry for the future.
As you’ll recall all our members work to our royal charter, this, in combination with a clear passion of all those who volunteer or are persuaded to work on these projects leads to a very high-quality piece of work.
If you disagree with this, then keep your eyes and ears open for the next call for a working party and bring your expertise to help us really shape our industry for the future.
For reference, according to Parliament: Our white papers are public facing and intended to guide our members and their clients to think about what good should look like.
Andy Evans FCInstCES, President
www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnevans