Summary of the EFCA 2017 conference “Global challenges – sustainable solutions: the role of cities companies and consultants” on June 2^nd 2017

The conference illustrated the key role played by consulting engineering companies in addressing climate change: adaptation, mitigation and sustainability. But we also got a picture of why the agenda is difficult to handle and what we as industry and as individual companies can and should do better.

The challenge is, simply put, to better understand the customers (or clients). The difficult part is that the customers' needs are different, depending on whether they are cities or megacities outside Europe. Whether they are private companies or investors understanding the customers and providing the right and relevant advisory services is a task for you as companies, where collaboration with innovative partners, other consulting engineers, city planners or architects, is one way forward. Despite this challenge, one thing was clear: every speaker at the conference identified the consulting engineering industry as crucial for achieving successful outcomes.

The legal framework for creating the right solutions constitute a double challenge. There is a mismatch between investments in, for example, power plants and the long-term targets that have been set for CO2-emissions. There is also a mismatch between the ambitions of the EU-regulation, and the initiatives launched by the EU Commission and the individual Member States. Addressing this issue is a task for the individual European consulting engineering associations as well as for EFCA. When the EU Commission launches the consultation on its forthcoming Adaptation strategy later this year we must be ready as an industry to raise our voice and deliver input. At the conference, we received an open invitation from the Commission to influence the regulation. This is an opportunity for us to seize.

In addition to the actual program, with almost 200 participants, the EFCA Conference 2017 allowed for good networking opportunities between the professionals of the European consulting engineering companies and partners, suppliers and customers of our industry.

Most of the presentations from the EFCA Business Day 2017 (Thursday June 1^st)  are available Here

The presentations from the main EFCA Conference 2017 (Friday June 2^nd) are available Here