Unfolding impacts of worldwide infrastructure are putting acute pressure on the engineering profession to steer future development onto a more sustainable path, said global practitioners meeting Sept. 14-16 in London. The warnings came at the annual conference of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, at which the group, which represents close to one million global engineers, released its first “state of the world” report. Hundreds of delegates from all continents were urged to take a leadership role to find ways to curtail future negative effects.
斯科特·威尔逊集团公司（Scott Wilson Group plc。Basingstoke, U.K., and of the country’s Association for Consultancy and Engineering. Among the report’s statistics he cited are global population growth and urbanization is generating the equivalent of a city of nearly two million people every two weeks, and one billion people lack access to adequate water supply.
安大略省密西沙加的FIDIC董事长兼前总裁FIDIC董事长兼前总裁John Boyd说，工程师的表现还不够。他指出：“我们到处都看到我们需要做得更好的必要性。”“我们的行业设计全球基础设施的50％以上。为了取得进步并提供更好的基础设施形式，我们是必须这样做的人，目前……我们还没有。”
Climate change is making the most pressing demands on the profession, claimed Keith Clarke, CEO of WS Atkins PLC, Epsom, U.K. “The starting point is [that] climate change is real. We are no longer into the odd bit of mitigation,” he asserted. “Our role now is to start to design in decarbonization in all our projects.”
克拉克说，由于没有时间制定更完整的标准，工程专业倾向于使用这些标准，因此设计以减少温室气体排放必须迭代，并且标准不断变化。他说：“接下来的十年是我们的机会，这是个好消息。”
Since developing countries will press to build polluting powerplants to fuel their own economic development, “our industry has to provide leadership,” urged Gregs Thomopulos, chairman and CEO of Stanley Consultants Inc., Muscatine, Iowa, and incoming FIDIC president. “We have to come up with...innovation in technologies that will reduce the release of carbon dioxide into the air. Then we have a chance. If we leave it to the political institutions in these countries, I don’t think they are going to stop building coal-fired powerplants.”
南非承包商Murray＆Roberts（Pty。）有限公司（Johannesburg Ltd.他指出：“当社会习惯其基础设施时，它忘记了最初将其带到那里的原因。”
In Africa, where infrastructure is not taken for granted, “built-environment professionals have now become valued by society,” Bruce pointed out. The continent is home to many people among those who make up “half the world” who have not benefited from the last 1,000 years of infrastructure investment, he said.
Sustainability “applies as much to corporations as to societies,” commented Ian Tyler, CEO of Balfour Beatty PLC, London. “It means behaving...as though we intend to be here for the long term.” For corporate survival to emerge from the current global economic crisis, good environmental management, health and safety, as well as business integrity practices provide “clear competitive advantage,” he said.
