Highlights of the WFEO General Assembly in Prague and WCCE participation
The 7th World Engineers Convention occurred in Prague from October 11 to the 13th, 2023 followed by the biennial General Assembly (GA). This GA acquired significant meaning as new authorities were elected and the new president, Mustafa Shehu (Nigeria), began his mandate as Jose Vieira (Portugal) finished his period. The new President-Elect is Eng. Seng Chuan Tan, from Singapore, a civil engineer. Ania Lopez (Italy) was elected as Executive Vice-president, and Ms. Nahla Ahmed Al Qasimi (United Arab Emirates), Mr. Miguel Fierro (Uruguay), Ms. He Jing (China), Mr. Nathaniel Matalanga (Kenya) and Mr. Navinchandra Vasoya (India) were elected National Members to the Executive Council. WCCE’s President, Eng. Jorge E. Abramian, acted as a member of the Nomination Committee and also the Election Committee.
Also worth noting were the WFEO’s Standing Committee meetings, which were conducted in parallel to the WEC convention to evaluate their activities and plans. WCCE participated in several of these meetings as we have members appointed in most of them. The SC on Anti-corruption suggested a couple of projects. The first consisted of the preparation of an international database of standardized costs of construction that could become a tool to compare prices in different countries to identify potential deviations. The second was to produce a book to demonstrate how corruption attempts against the achievement of the SDG’s.
The SC Committee on Water presented the table of contents of the report that is scheduled to be published in 2024 with the title “Water, Engineering, and Food”. Also, it was confirmed that in 2025 it is scheduled the printing of the report “Water, Engineering and Smart Cities”, to be edited by Eng. Adolfo Guitelman acting as Secretary of the SC, on behalf of WCCE.
Also worth mentioning was the analysis of the Infrastructure Report Card review, which was prepared independently by WCCE and ASCE. They both recognized the effort and the need to improve the methodology and agreed that it would be worthwhile to convert the Working Group into a Standing Committee.
There were too many other meetings having the marvelous and mysterious setting of Prague in the background. You may find more information on WFEO’s site https://www.wfeo.org/wfeo-general-assembly-meetings-and-7th-world-engineers-convention-prague-2023/.
