The MacRobert Award is regarded as the leading prize recognising UK innovation in engineering by corporations.
The annual award process begins with an invitation to companies to submit entries, by the end of January.
The judging panel for the awards, which includes several Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, then selects a shortlist of six to eight candidates.
In 2019, the 50th anniversary year of the awards,[2] Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps marking "the marvels of British engineering", with a new set of 10 stamps that featured, along with other engineering achievements, three past winners of the MacRobert Award.
The original remit was to reward “an outstanding contribution” made “by way of innovation in the fields of engineering or the other physical technologies or in the application of the physical sciences, which has enhanced or will enhance the national prestige and prosperity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.