Growing international interest in CEEQUAL

25 November 2010

In October and November, CEEQUAL Chief Executive Roger Venables attended a series of meetings and conferences in the USA, Australia and Argentina. The trigger for the trip was the development of sustainability rating systems for civil engineering projects, and collaboration was high on the agenda at these meetings.

The trip involved annual meetings and conferences of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Australian Green Infrastructure Council (AGIC), and a number of related meetings around these.

At the Annual Meeting of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) in Buenos Aires, Roger took part in a seminar held by WFEO’s Committee on Engineering and the Environment on the development of infrastructure rating tools.

In addition to Roger’s presentation on CEEQUAL’s development and our six years’ experience, the Australian Green Infrastructure Council’s Chairman, David Hood, and the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Director of Sustainability and International Alliances, Mike Sanio, spoke about the development of similar tools in Australia and the USA. Delegates at the seminar and the meeting of the WFEO Committee on Engineering and the Environment showed particular interest in such tools and the potential for using CEEQUAL International around the world.

Over the last 18 months, CEEQUAL has been assisting the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in the development of a sustainability rating tool for the USA, and this was launched for piloting at the ASCE’s Annual Conference in Las Vegas in October. CEEQUAL will continue to be involved in the development and progress of this tool.

Finally, Roger was Keynote Speaker at the Annual Conference of the Australian Green Infrastructure Council (AGIC) held in Brisbane, followed by a series of joint talks with ICE Past President Jean Venables to AGIC Members and Engineers Australia audiences in Gold Coast City, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. At the AGIC Conference and the subsequent meetings, there was once again strong interest in our experience with CEEQUAL, and further active collaboration with AGIC is now being arranged to assist in the development of their tool.

As well as assisting the development of these tools for practitioners in the USA and Australia alongside our development of CEEQUAL International, the benefit to CEEQUAL of all this activity is to widen our input to the development of the CEEQUAL Scheme in all its versions, and specifically in our approach to Version 5 for Projects to be prepared next year.