New Membership Rules

INCOSE has changed the way that membership payments are collected and we in the UK Chapter must align our arrangements to match. Instead of the fixed annual renewal date of June 1st each year, renewals now take place as follows; those who joined before March 1st 2008, will be asked to renew on the 1st June as previously. Anyone who has joined since March 1st 2008 will be asked to renew on the anniversary of their joining date. Lapsed members who rejoin will be renewed for a year commencing from the date of rejoining.

Clearly there are a lot of members (close on 700 now), who will be renewing on 1st June this year. Rates are unchanged at:

Individual members qualify for a Senior category if they are at least 64 years of age the time of their membership renewal and have maintained their individual membership for the five membership years prior to applying for the Senior category.

The other change to the membership arrangements is that from March 1st for new members, and from June 1st for renewing members, hard copies of the SE Journal and Insight will only be available at an additional charge of £18 and £12 per annum respectively. Both of these publications are also available to members on-line via the main INCOSE web site ( if you do not wish to pay for hard copies. The environmentally conscious amongst you may feel that airfreighting paper around the world is not a sustainable option, but INCOSE has taken this decision primarily to avoid increasing membership fees. INCOSE UK’s own newsletter, preview, will continue to be delivered as hard copy to all UK Chapter members at no additional charge.

In the long term the new renewal arrangements should make things easier, but the short notice of the changes has caught us out at the UK Chapter. In particular, anyone who has joined via the UK Chapter during March will have been charged for 15 months membership as per the old fixed renewal date arrangement. INCOSE CO is already working to the new arrangement and so they are only signing people up for 12 months from date of joining. We will of course be rectifying the situation, by offering refunds, however we ask those concerned to be patient while we get things organised for an orderly response.

The other change for UK Chapter members is that John Mead is winding down his involvement with INCOSE UK.  Some of you will be aware that Dot The Eye have been running event registration since AA07, and from this year they will also be handling membership renewals and applications.  So if you have any questions about membership issues please contact Dot The Eye.

Peter Lister

Finance Director, INCOSE UK Chapter