Industry leaders attending this year’s FIDIC Global Infrastructure Conference in Cape Town got to grips with a series of issues impacting the engineering, construction and infrastructure sector on the first day of this flagship event. In a panel session on the politics of infrastructure, Carla Moonen, a senator in the Dutch Parliament reminded the audience that as someone who was also the president of the Royal Dutch Association of Engineers, she was proof that it was possible, if not essential, for the industry to engage in the political process. “This industry needs to be vocal, be valuable, own the space and speak up for infrastructure. And don’t be shy about it either – you are all intelligent people and probably more intelligent than many politicians!” said Moonen.
In the same session, Lídia de Fátima da Graça Cardoso, former minister in the Government of Mozambique, addressed some of the challenges and opportunities for infrastructure in a cyclone-prone developing country. She said it was essential to harness traditional knowledge and develop of protective infrastructures to foster resilience and sustainability and highlighted that infrastructure was a fundamental driver of economic development.
Aisha Williams, global director, infrastructure finance at The World Bank in the USA, highlighted some of the work that the bank had been doing with the G20 via its Infrastructure Working Group. She was keen to stress the importance of project preparation and the role of the MDBs and government support within that. Williams also addressed the importance of infrastructure investment in promoting growth and spoke warmly of FIDIC’s role and the work of the Global Infrastructure Facility, which is empowered by the G20. She also highlighted MDB-implemented project support to governments which were helping to provide a pipeline of projects and the importance of creating a fit-for-purpose project preparation ecosystem.
In a session entitled Delivering infrastructure for society, equality, climate and nature, FIDIC board member and managing director of Intercontinental Consultants and Technocrats, said that this wasn’t just one of the themes of the conference, it was in many ways, the defining challenge of our times. “Infrastructure has always been about more than concrete, steel, and technology. It is about people. It shapes how societies grow, how opportunities are distributed, how resilient we are in the face of crises and how we coexist with the natural world around us. The stakes today are higher than ever,” Kapila said.
In the same session, Inés Ferguson, president of the European consultancy federation EFCA, said that consulting engineers were increasingly instrumental in designing infrastructure for multiple uses. “We are aligning green and security priorities and collaborating with other sectors for innovation. We have never been more relevant for governments,” she said.
An excellent discussion on How to finance infrastructure, moderated by Linda Darr, CEO of ACEC, the American Council of Engineering Companies, saw panellists discussing the importance of maintaining funding commitments against a backdrop of changing geopolitical developments. Darr stressed the need to maintain current levels of investment, especially in the area of transport, to provide stability and certainty to the industry to enable it to deliver much-needed infrastructure improvements. Panellists also highlighted creative solutions to the financing of infrastructure gave examples of projects where creative funding has been used and potentially repeated elsewhere.
The first day of the conference was rounded off with a presentation on the latest phase of the work of the FIDIC Global Leadership Forum’s Carbon Collaboration Initiative. This work, spearheaded by the CEOs from some of the world’s largest consulting engineering firms, aims to develop a common, replicable and standardised process of calculation and disclosure of embodied and operational CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions related to infrastructure projects. Speaking during the session, Malani Padayachee-Saman, CEO of MPAMOT in South Africa, praised FIDIC for taking the initiative and playing such a key leadership role on an issue that was so vital to the industry and indeed society.
