CEC June 2024 News Update

News Update from CEC June 2024 Dear friends and members of the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council Welcome to our short newsletter for June 2024. We are delighted to share some very good news that the Commonwealth Engineers' Council have just had our Commonwealth Accreditation renewed, which means that we continue to be an officially recognised and accredited Commonwealth member organisation. This is a significant achievement since the terms of accreditation have become more stringent recently, so it gives us confidence that our governanace, constitution and strategy are in line with Commonwealth high standards. Members of CEC recently came together in our first full membership Council meeting of 2024 - and if you are a member of CEC and missed this meeting, please let me know if you would like to see the recording, or look out for the notes coming soon. This was an opportunity to meet other members on screen - many for the first time - and as well as a catch up on recent activity, the main point for discussion was the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa in October, where we are hoping to have representation from two of our Board Members - Pratarp Singh from Fiji, and Merv Lindsay from Australia. We will be producing a White Paper with recommendations for our Commonowealth leaders from the engineering community. Please do look out for this and share you thoughts and comments. We realised when inviting attendees to this meeting that many contact details have recently changed, and we will be in touch soon to update our membership contact database. Since we last wrote, we have also been actively collaborating with two partners groups: the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Inititative (CSCI), which is a group of like-minded Commonwealth organisations who have been working together to formulate strategies that will tackle the urgent challenges of climate change and rapidly growing cities by promoting sustainable urbanisation. This resulted in the successful Kigali Commitment on Sustainable Urbanisation at the last CHOGM meeting in Rwanda, and is being updated for the forthcoming meeting later this year, with a renewed and updated commitment. We have just heard that we have had an official CHOGM side event shortlisted for approval into the main programme. We have also recently relaunched BEPIC - Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth - with three of our closest Commonwealth partners, the Commonwealth Architects, the Commonwealth Planners and the Commonwealth Surveyors and Land Economists. Please read more about this collaboration below. We are hoping to join forced to organise an event at COP29 in Azerbaijan, again later this year. And finally, we have now appointed two co-leads for the Young Engineers / Future Leaders group, for whom we have big ambitions for their future work on behalf of CEC. Congratulations to the co-leads Chisanga Kapacha from Zambia and Joseph Byukusenge from Rwanda. Read more about them here , and look out for their calls for engagement to populate their working groups. For those who have not yet formally joined, we invite you all to become a CEC member which is free of charge. Full members are Professional Engineering Institutions or similar organisations across the Commonwealth, and there is also an Associate and an individual membership option available. Please do pass this newsletter on to anybody you feel would be interested in getting involved, and get in touch if you would like to know more about the CEC, or have news to include, or ideas for future collaborations. Next news update is due in the Autumn of 2024. Dawn Bonfield MBE FREng; President, Commonwealth Engineers' Council (2023-2025) [email protected] Happy International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) if you are reading this on or near 23 June. This year we are celebrating the ten year anniversary of International Women in Engineering Day, and we take this opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate all of our female engineering friends and colleagues for their hard work - and we renew our dedication to achieving a more diverse engineering sector. The theme this year is The Lives of Women: Enhanced by Engineering Join our INWED webinar, in partnership with the Women in Engineering Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, on Friday 21 June if you are able to. Register here. UK Government Green Cities and Infrastructure Funding Programme A new £48 million programme to support green cities and develop resilient infrastructure in lower income countries has been launched, which will provide expertise and technical support to encourage innovation and sustainable economic growth in countries including Zambia, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. Examples include: - in Zambia, working alongside the US and EU to provide technical support to reduce the transportation costs of goods through the Lobito Corridor to Angola and create new development opportunities - in Tanzania,to improve waste management in Dar Es Salaam and support the city to become more resilient to climate shocks - in Bangladesh, to improve traffic management and reduce pollution across major cities Mapping of Engineering Capacity in the Commonwealth CEC would like to thank Stephon Ramsay from Antigua who has been surveying the Caribbean islands for information to feed into our mapping exercise for the Commonwealth to establish skills capacity gaps. This excercise is part of a wider engagement with BEPIC partners to establish levels of professional expertise in the areas of engineering, architecture and planning. We also have the support of a King's College London summer placement student who will be mapping the education accreditation and professional registration capacity, and producing a report that will allow us to get a global picture of skills needs. Please do feed into this database if you are asked to provide country level information. G20 Preparation and UN High Level Political Forum In the lead up to the annual G20 (Group of Twenty) Summit to be held in Rio de Janeiro on 18-19 November, titled ‘Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet’, G20 member countries are holding thematic alliances/summits to develop inputs to the G20 communique. CEC board member, Chris Chukwunta joined the Canadian delegation to the G20 entrepreneurial alliance (summit) titled ‘Connecting Cultures, Fostering Business’ which was held in Goiania Brazil this June focused on a variety of business-building, policy-making and networking activities with G20 leaders, international trade organizations, consular trade representatives, business associations, and young people. Chris will also be joining the Canadian delegation to the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development in New York in July, under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Council. Congratulations to Chris on these outstanding achievements. Commonwealth Standards, Codes and Model Contracts CEC has been invited by the Commonwealth Secretary General to provide some expert representatives to help draw up a model contract for infrastructure, extractives and energy industries in order to address the lack of uniformity in these contracts that can lead to inefficiencies, imbalances, and loopholes that do not serve the best interests of the member countries. Thanks to Pratarp Singh and Christine Blackmore for their participation with this working group. The Commonwealth has a number of standards and codes that can be accessed and used by any member country, and we will be compiling a list of these for inclusion on the CEC website. One example of these is the Commonwealth Anti-Corruption Benchmark , which can be downloaded here. 2024 Dates for your Diaries: 9-13 September: 10th UNESCO Africa Engineering Week , Angola, in collaboration with FAEO 15-18 October: Global Engineering Conference and WFEO Meetings and CEC Networking Meeting, Kigali, Rwanda. 21-25 October : CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Samoa 4-8 November: World Urban Forum in Cairo and online organised by UN Habitat From Septemer, look out for a series of CPD Webinars for members to join, including an overview of the Carbon Management Standard, PAS2080 , which is available free of charge. Relaunch of BEPIC On World Environment Day 2024, Commonwealth associations representing architects, engineers, planners and surveyors have relaunched the ‘Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth’ (BEPIC), a voluntary collaboration that aims to advance advocacy, capacity building and climate action in response to the global challenges posed by climate change and rapid urbanisation. The collaboration also responds to the findings of the Survey of the Built Environment Professions in the Commonwealth , published in 2020, which identified: That there is a critical lack of capacity in a number of Commonwealth countries, many of which are urbanising rapidly and are among the most vulnerable. That there is a corresponding lack of educational and institutional capacity to grow the profession fast enough in a number of Commonwealth countries. That there is a perceived weakness in built environment policy in many Commonwealth countries in terms of standards, implementation, and enforcement. BEPIC members include the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA), the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP), the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE) and the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council (CEC). Read more here. The Commonwealth Engineers’ Council mission is to promote and support the role of engineers and engineering in the Commonwealth as a key enabler of the critical infrastructure that underpins civilisation, the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the response to the global climate emergency . ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

News Update from CEC June 2024

Dear friends and members of the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council

Welcome to our short newsletter for June 2024.

We are delighted to share some very good news that the Commonwealth Engineers' Council have just had our Commonwealth Accreditation renewed, which means that we continue to be an officially recognised and accredited Commonwealth member organisation. This is a significant achievement since the terms of accreditation have become more stringent recently, so it gives us confidence that our governanace, constitution and strategy are in line with Commonwealth high standards.

Members of CEC recently came together in our first full membership Council meeting of 2024 - and if you are a member of CEC and missed this meeting, please let me know if you would like to see the recording, or look out for the notes coming soon. This was an opportunity to meet other members on screen - many for the first time - and as well as a catch up on recent activity, the main point for discussion was the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa in October, where we are hoping to have representation from two of our Board Members - Pratarp Singh from Fiji, and Merv Lindsay from Australia. We will be producing a White Paper with recommendations for our Commonowealth leaders from the engineering community. Please do look out for this and share you thoughts and comments. We realised when inviting attendees to this meeting that many contact details have recently changed, and we will be in touch soon to update our membership contact database.

Since we last wrote, we have also been actively collaborating with two partners groups: the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Inititative (CSCI), which is a group of like-minded Commonwealth organisations who have been working together to formulate strategies that will tackle the urgent challenges of climate change and rapidly growing cities by promoting sustainable urbanisation. This resulted in the successful Kigali Commitment on Sustainable Urbanisation at the last CHOGM meeting in Rwanda, and is being updated for the forthcoming meeting later this year, with a renewed and updated commitment. We have just heard that we have had an official CHOGM side event shortlisted for approval into the main programme.

We have also recently relaunched BEPIC - Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth - with three of our closest Commonwealth partners, the Commonwealth Architects, the Commonwealth Planners and the Commonwealth Surveyors and Land Economists. Please read more about this collaboration below. We are hoping to join forced to organise an event at COP29 in Azerbaijan, again later this year.

And finally, we have now appointed two co-leads for the Young Engineers / Future Leaders group, for whom we have big ambitions for their future work on behalf of CEC. Congratulations to the co-leads Chisanga Kapacha from Zambia and Joseph Byukusenge from Rwanda. Read more about them here, and look out for their calls for engagement to populate their working groups.

For those who have not yet formally joined, we invite you all to become a CEC member which is free of charge. Full members are Professional Engineering Institutions or similar organisations across the Commonwealth, and there is also an Associate and an individual membership option available.

Please do pass this newsletter on to anybody you feel would be interested in getting involved, and get in touch if you would like to know more about the CEC, or have news to include, or ideas for future collaborations. Next news update is due in the Autumn of 2024.

Dawn Bonfield MBE FREng; President, Commonwealth Engineers' Council (2023-2025) [email protected]

Happy International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) if you are reading this on or near 23 June. This year we are celebrating the ten year anniversary of International Women in Engineering Day, and we take this opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate all of our female engineering friends and colleagues for their hard work - and we renew our dedication to achieving a more diverse engineering sector.

The theme this year is The Lives of Women: Enhanced by Engineering

Join our INWED webinar, in partnership with the Women in Engineering Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations, on Friday 21 June if you are able to. Register here.

UK Government Green Cities and Infrastructure Funding Programme

A new £48 million programme to support green cities and develop resilient infrastructure in lower income countries has been launched, which will provide expertise and technical support to encourage innovation and sustainable economic growth in countries including Zambia, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. Examples include:

- in Zambia, working alongside the US and EU to provide technical support to reduce the transportation costs of goods through the Lobito Corridor to Angola and create new development opportunities

- in Tanzania,to improve waste management in Dar Es Salaam and support the city to become more resilient to climate shocks

- in Bangladesh, to improve traffic management and reduce pollution across major cities

Mapping of Engineering Capacity in the Commonwealth

CEC would like to thank Stephon Ramsay from Antigua who has been surveying the Caribbean islands for information to feed into our mapping exercise for the Commonwealth to establish skills capacity gaps. This excercise is part of a wider engagement with BEPIC partners to establish levels of professional expertise in the areas of engineering, architecture and planning. We also have the support of a King's College London summer placement student who will be mapping the education accreditation and professional registration capacity, and producing a report that will allow us to get a global picture of skills needs. Please do feed into this database if you are asked to provide country level information.

G20 Preparation and UN High Level Political Forum

In the lead up to the annual G20 (Group of Twenty) Summit to be held in Rio de Janeiro on 18-19 November, titled ‘Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet’, G20 member countries are holding thematic alliances/summits to develop inputs to the G20 communique.

CEC board member, Chris Chukwunta joined the Canadian delegation to the G20 entrepreneurial alliance (summit) titled ‘Connecting Cultures, Fostering Business’ which was held in Goiania Brazil this June focused on a variety of business-building, policy-making and networking activities with G20 leaders, international trade organizations, consular trade representatives, business associations, and young people.

Chris will also be joining the Canadian delegation to the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development in New York in July, under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Council.

Congratulations to Chris on these outstanding achievements.

Commonwealth Standards, Codes and Model Contracts

CEC has been invited by the Commonwealth Secretary General to provide some expert representatives to help draw up a model contract for infrastructure, extractives and energy industries in order to address the lack of uniformity in these contracts that can lead to inefficiencies, imbalances, and loopholes that do not serve the best interests of the member countries. Thanks to Pratarp Singh and Christine Blackmore for their participation with this working group.

The Commonwealth has a number of standards and codes that can be accessed and used by any member country, and we will be compiling a list of these for inclusion on the CEC website.

One example of these is the Commonwealth Anti-Corruption Benchmark, which can be downloaded here.

2024 Dates for your Diaries:

9-13 September: 10th UNESCO Africa Engineering Week, Angola, in collaboration with FAEO
15-18 October: Global Engineering Conference and WFEO Meetings and CEC Networking Meeting, Kigali, Rwanda.
21-25 October: CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Samoa
4-8 November: World Urban Forum in Cairo and online organised by UN Habitat
From Septemer, look out for a series of CPD Webinars for members to join, including an overview of the Carbon Management Standard, PAS2080, which is available free of charge.

Relaunch of BEPIC

On World Environment Day 2024, Commonwealth associations representing architects, engineers, planners and surveyors have relaunched the ‘Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth’ (BEPIC), a voluntary collaboration that aims to advance advocacy, capacity building and climate action in response to the global challenges posed by climate change and rapid urbanisation.
The collaboration also responds to the findings of the Survey of the Built Environment Professions in the Commonwealth, published in 2020, which identified:

That there is a critical lack of capacity in a number of Commonwealth countries, many of which are urbanising rapidly and are among the most vulnerable.
That there is a corresponding lack of educational and institutional capacity to grow the profession fast enough in a number of Commonwealth countries.
That there is a perceived weakness in built environment policy in many Commonwealth countries in terms of standards, implementation, and enforcement.

BEPIC members include the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA), the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP), the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy (CASLE) and the Commonwealth Engineers’ Council (CEC). Read more here.

The Commonwealth Engineers’ Council mission is to promote and support the role of engineers and engineering in the Commonwealth as a key enabler of the critical infrastructure that underpins civilisation, the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the response to the global climate emergency.