FIDIC Future Leaders highlight urgency of the need for change

An inspirational Future Leaders Symposium held in Geneva on Sunday 8 September 2024 at FIDIC’s annual Global Infrastructure Conference launched three new publications addressing the key challenges and opportunities for infrastructure delivery with a focus on technology and sustainability.

The three publications, part of the FIDIC Future Leaders Booklet series, were Challenges and opportunities for infrastructure delivery 2024, Sustainability 2024 and Technology and AI 2024.

Commenting on the booklets’ launch, Rodrigo Juarez , chair of the FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council, said that he was delighted to see future leaders represented so prominently at FIDIC’s annual event. “Having the voices of upcoming and young engineers heard is crucial as they continue to bring new and innovative points of view towards project delivery and the development of wider infrastructure.

“This year marks an important milestone and a first for us, as in this eighth year of publishing our booklet we have had such a great number of good quality applications that we will be publishing not one but three Future Leaders’ booklets around different themes. What an achievement this is! I would like to thank those that led the FIDIC Future Leaders before me, the team in the Future Leaders’ Advisory Council and FIDIC staff who have all supported the bold aim for this programme to go from an ambitious idea to the achievement we see today.”

The Challenges and opportunities booklet included discursive articles by members of the FIDIC Future Leaders group on the challenges of implementing the FIDIC Yellow Book in Brazil, the rise of the ‘Humanistic Engineer’, the role of equity and inclusion in achieving net zero, embedding social sustainability into road projects in Africa and how to invest to prevent unethical behaviours on projects. As ever, the Future Leaders addressed the issues head on and with gusto.

Nowhere was this more the case than in the collection of articles on preventing unethical behaviours on projects, with article authors taking a strong stance against corruption and advocating for an ethical approach across the board. The booklet concluded: “Embracing and promoting ethical leadership principles within organisations can set a precedent for responsible behaviour and decision-making. Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach, including robust regulatory frameworks, corporate accountability and active participation from future leaders.”

The Sustainability 2024 booklet was equally hard-hitting, with article authors acknowledging the seriousness of the need for the sector to address the challenges of the UN sustainable development goals, the race to achieve net zero and the fallout from recent series climate events that have caused devastation and destruction around the world. The FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council has provided a platform for future leaders in the consulting engineering industry to share, reflect and come forward with new ideas or challenges, to reflect on those challenges and look to the future by developing a completely different approach that will also have additional or new benefits to economies, societies, and nature as a whole.

In the Technology and AI 2024 booklet this different approach was illustrated in a series of articles on AI in road asset management, AI in engineering: transforming processes and overcoming challenges, challenges faced by companies in dealing with the free time of employees who use Gen AI to optimise processes and enhancing construction project performance through an AI-based delay management system.

As well as being forthright and hard-hitting, the three booklets recognised that key challenges were having to be addressed during a period of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and that this would have an impact on consulting engineering, infrastructure development, attraction, retention and development of future leaders.

“The challenges and opportunities explored in our publications will have significant effects on how we, live, work and interact and we must not leave anyone behind,” said Rodrigo Juarez, chair of the FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council. “I would strongly urge everyone in our industry to study the articles by our future leaders in these booklets because they are not only interesting and valuable, but they are also vital reading as we move towards a more sustainable, equitable and more than likely, a technology-driven future.”

Click here to download Challenges and opportunities for infrastructure delivery 2024.

Click here to download Sustainability 2024.

Click here to download Technology and AI 2024.