The winners of the 2021 FIDIC Member Association Excellence Awards were announced today (8.9.21) at a virtual ceremony by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC).
The awards recognise individuals, teams, campaigns, initiatives, publications and events and celebrate excellence in how FIDIC’s global member associations operate in a fast-changing and dynamic industry landscape while serving their members and other stakeholders. Speaking at the awards presentation, FIDIC CEO Dr Nelson Ogunshakin said: “We have member associations in more than 100 countries across the globe who are doing excellent work on behalf of their member firms and the industry in which they and we all work and we are delighted to recognise some of them today.”
This year’s Member Association Excellence Awards saw prizes presented in three categories as follows.
- Best Advocacy or Campaign
- Best Strategic Programme
- Best Publication or website
In the Best Advocacy or Campaign category, there were two highly commended entries and a winner.
The first Highly Commended prize was awarded to FIDIC’s member association in the Netherlands, the Royal Dutch Engineers (NLingenieurs) for their approach and actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis. This approach involved calling on government to invest in the sector around the slogan, “Invest instead of compensate”. The multi-stakeholder approach built unity in the industry and delivered very real and lasting results making it a showcase for how to act in crisis.
The second Highly Commended prize was awarded to FIDIC’s member association in Switzerland, USIC, the Union Suisse des Sociétés d’Ingénieurs Conseils for its campaign “From Monday to Friday for Future”. This campaign has enabled the civil engineering consulting industry to position itself strongly as an ecological, economic, and civil society player and helped kick-start a drive for the public repositioning of the association.
The winner of the Best Advocacy or Campaign category was the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for their campaign “It’s Time for PPP Fairness”, which called for fairness in the implementation of the US Congress Paycheck Protection Program and to address the problem of a provision in federal contracting rules that threatened engineering firms that qualify for loan forgiveness to give some of that needed assistance back. ACEC requested a clarification in the law to ensure that all firms that qualify for loan forgiveness are permitted to keep this critical assistance. The campaign was a brilliant and successful example of a FIDIC member association making a real difference on behalf of its members and the wider industry.
In the Best Strategic Programme category there was a highly commended entry and a winner.
The Highly Commended prize was awarded to the China National Association Of Engineering Consultants (CNAEC) for the FIDIC Certified Consulting Engineer Programme. This programme started as a Pilot Programme in China and offers the learning tools, methodologies and business practice knowledge needed to become a certified FIDIC Certified Consulting Engineer.
The winner of the Best Strategic Programme award was Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) for its Protecting Lives and Livelihoods campaign. This brilliant campaign highlighted the role that engineers and specifically consulting engineers play in protecting lives and livelihoods and really showed to the public what a consulting engineer is and the value they bring to society. CESA’s major three-year PR campaign is raising the profile of the industry and the positive impact it has in underpinning economic growth and development.
The award for Best Publication or Website had a highly commended entry and one winner.
The Highly Commended prize was awarded to FIDIC’s member association in Switzerland, USIC, the Union Suisse des Sociétés d’Ingénieurs Conseils for its digital annual report, which has been widely recognised as a state-of-the-art multimedia approach that is unorthodox but extremely effective in getting its message across to stakeholders.
The winner of the Best Publication or Website award was the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for their series of Private Industry Briefs. These briefs have played an essential role for member firms both before and during the pandemic. Prepared quarterly, each brief targets a specific issue enabling firms to make informed decisions and have been extremely useful in providing business-critical information to the industry.
Concluding the virtual presentation, Dr Nelson Ogunshakin thanked all the FIDIC member associations that submitted entries and congratulated all those shortlisted and all the winners. “These awards are an excellent example of the great work that our member associations do on behalf of their members and the industry on a worldwide scale. We look forward to promoting all the successful entries and I would encourage all FIDIC MAs to give consideration to showcasing their brilliant work by entering the awards in 2022.”
