RiNord meeting enjoys spectacular Faroese welcome

The Nordic associations of consulting engineers met last week for a lively programme of work, sharing of best practice and innovative engineering projects and networking, with EFCA Director General Sue Arundale joining as a guest.  With an impossibly beautiful and unspoiled landscape - and unusually consistently pleasant weather - the associations tackled some emerging challenges, common to the Nordic countries, but also relevant to the rest of the consulting engineering sector in Europe. The Faroese hosts offered a tour of the jaw-dropping tunnel connecting some of the islands, which - amongst other features - has the world's deepest underwater roundabout. Followed by further site visits to another tunnel still under construction and a new indoor sports arena, due to open in February 2025, participants were enthralled by the engineering and construction projects, as well as by the warm hospitality of the small island population.  Another remarkable and effective, but less "high-tech" construction method is the use of grass roofs, a traditional technique which offers a fantastic nature-based solution to a very modern problem, namely building insulation with a sustainable use of materials.  More detail will be provided in a special feature, to be published in the coming weeks, in Construction Europe. In the meantime, the video in the link below, contains more information about the tunnel.  More information is available here.

New Working Group on AI and Energy Consumption
Yesterday, EFCA's new Working Group held its kick-off meeting, with a first discussion on how to tackle the trade-off between the potential benefits of AI on the one hand and its energy consumption on the other. The energy intensive nature of data centres, quantum computing etc., has provoked discussion in recent months and consulting engineers decided to tackle the issue head on.  The Working Group will consider several questions over the coming months, with a view to making recommendations for potential solutions. The starting point is that we need to embrace the emerging technology, but not to the extent that the costs far outweigh the benefits. The Group is a collaboration between EFCA's relevant Committees, with other experts also joining. One of the first talking points yesterday was the lack of baselines, in terms of how much energy data centres are actually using.  The Group aims to produce recommendations before the end of the year.  More information is available here.

The full newsletter is available here.