Ewen Rose is an experienced freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in building services engineering. He was previously editor-in-chief of H&V News and edited Heating and Air Conditioning Journal and Energy Management magazine. He founded McGowen Rose Associates in 1999 as a provider of specialist marketing and communications content for the sector. He is chair of the CIBSE Young Engineers’ Awards; a former vice chair of the CIBSE Patrons and the CIBSE/ASHRAE Group. He is also a trustee of the Manly Trust which supports charities focused on education, engineering and increasing opportunities for young people. Ewen has worked for range of clients including manufacturers and professional bodies writing specialist articles for the trade press and for websites and contributing to their PR and marketing campaigns.
He has been retained by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) since 2004 to support its marketing and communications team. In that role, he has produced many by-line articles, press releases, and speeches as well as organising and chairing seminars, conferences, and industry briefings. He is also secretary of BESA’s Indoor Air Quality group.
Ewen was awarded a CIBSE Silver Medal in 2024.
“Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something” Max Lucado
Behind the headlines from Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and other troubled hot spots around the world, there are thousands of people (most of whom are totally unsung) who are repeatedly putting their lives at risk to try and help victims of war, famine, persecution, violence.
Can we, who do little bits and pieces to help our industry, be compared with surgeons operating under fire, or civilian drivers defying the odds to get aid to where it is needed? Or even with campaigners who give up everything to focus on looking after the elderly and vulnerable, saving animals, cleaning up rivers and so on.
No, of course, we can’t. And we wouldn’t even try, but there is a common thread: All volunteers feel passionately about something and then look at what they CAN do to help, not what they CAN’T. We can all do something. We can’t all be medics, aid workers or carers, but all those people need support so they can focus on making their skills count – and that also applies to engineers.
So, what did I think I could do?
I started my working life as a journalist with great ambitions to be a foreign correspondent. That came from my life as the son of a diplomat who travelled the world administering aid programmes and helping British citizens in distress overseas – he even spent four years rescuing UK businesspeople from Libyan jails.
However, my foreign correspondent ambitions (reporting from war zones and the like) were not to be. I ended up in a completely different branch of journalism – the trade press during its heyday in the late 80s and early 90s – and started writing for building services engineering magazines, eventually becoming editor of Heating & Air Conditioning Journal (HAC) in 1995.
As part of my pitch for the job, I suggested we launch an award for young engineers. There weren’t many industry awards around in those days, which is hard to imagine now as they are everywhere, but still there are none quite like the awards that later became the CIBSE Young Engineers’ Awards.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…long story short my bosses at the publishing giant Emap backed the idea, and we launched the HAC Graduate of the Year Award, which was first presented at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate the following year. Why Harrogate? Because the CIBSE Annual Conference was there, and we thought it would be clever to follow CIBSE around the country as then we would have a captive audience for our smart awards dinner.
The first winner of the HAC Award was none other than Kevin Mitchell, who went on to become CIBSE President. He was the first to experience our unique prize, which was a trip to the ASHRAE Winter Meeting in the USA (it was held in Philadelphia in January 1997)…because we reached out to our friends in ASHRAE to partner and initiate an opportunity for our young engineers to mix and collaborate.
So, in the beginning, the award was part of my job as editor of the magazine, but really it quickly became much more.
The CIBSE ASHRAE Group was already flourishing under the leadership of Tim Dwyer, and he quickly became the frontman for the whole project, with me as his trusty sidekick. His longstanding links with ASHRAE and deep involvement with CIBSE helped of course, but he was (and is) a passionate advocate for young engineers following his many years in education at London South Bank University and UCL.
I left Emap in 1999 to start my own business and HAC closed in 2006, but the award lived on as the CIBSE ASHRAE Graduate of the Year Award and is about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. And what used to be part of my job became my volunteering opportunity.
So why did it matter to me?
The proudest part of my career by far has been seeing the hundreds of entrants, finalists, and winners go on to achieve great things. I am not an engineer but have spent all my working life around them, and I remain in awe of their talent – but I also recognise the need to give them a spotlight to showcase that talent because the general public has such a sketchy understanding or appreciation of what building services engineers do.
I realised that was something I could do. Help give them a spotlight and a career boost.
So, over the past 30 years we have thrust dozens of young engineers into the spotlight and challenged them to make presentations of their own ideas to a room full of the industry’s great and good, including the presidents of CIBSE and ASHRAE. That’s quite a challenge for a young engineer and many of them feel daunted by it.
It became a family affair too.
Which brings me to my co-volunteer – my wife Chris. For many years, she came along to help Tim and I because she sensed it was important. Then gradually she became central to the whole event as "Aunty" Chris who stayed backstage with the finalists as they nervously waited to go on and give their presentations. She kept them calm and many of our "alumni" still ask after her.
And soon it will be the 30th CIBSE/ASHRAE Graduate of the Year award, but in the intervening years it became the building block of a much larger scheme: the CIBSE Young Engineers’ Awards that now include the Employer of the Year awards, along with the Apprentice and Undergraduate categories – and the CIBSE staff have turned it into a slick and brilliantly designed programme. A far cry from the early ‘amateur’ efforts Tim and I ran through the CIBSE ASHRAE Group.
It also brought me other volunteering opportunities.
As well as the CIBSE ASHRAE Group, I became vice chair of CIBSE Patrons – long-time sponsors and supporters of the Awards – and was invited to become a trustee of the Manly Trust, which has been providing cash prizes to all the finalists for nearly 20 years.
It started off as part of my job, became a bit of a ‘freelance’ thing, and has been my main volunteering commitment for the past two decades – and I couldn’t be prouder. And let’s be honest, being involved with something this good hasn’t done my career any harm either.
And I never forget how much I owe to all those amazing young engineers.
This year's deadline for entries to the Young Engineers Awards is 31 July 2025. Submit your entry or find out more.