By Lynda Myer
ITA president Arnold Dix at a press conference at WTC2023, emphasized on the communication and better understanding the Engineers’ role in providing climate resilience and sustainable solutions, while he stated to that the people around the world were anxious about climate change and politicians, who wanted popular support, but engineers could provide a solid and reliable place of truth.
“We want to be able to say to a politician, to a person anywhere on the planet, you can trust us because for thousands of years people like us have been delivering the fresh water, the sewage systems, the food, transport, all this real stuff’. They can rely on us,” said Dix.
He continued: “As president of the ITA if I have a plea for you: it’s to understand that we are not political, we are empowering people. Our missions are all about making life better for everyone, no matter where you are on the planet. That’s what engineers do. Engineers are good-hearted people but they need to stand up and that’s what we’re doing now at the ITA.”
He also added: “To address the urgent issues facing the world, the ITA was bringing together engineers, scientists and social scientists and WTC2023 was the first conference where that mission had hatched. There are young people coming from all around the world with energy that we’ve not seen.”
“As part of the ITA’s sustainability initiatives, it is developing a tool to assess projects. Some projects might be restudied if they’re driven by the wrong motivation and we want to restudy some of them,” said Dix.
In order to helping clients to deliver projects that embraced sustainability and its first generation of new contracts had just been adopted by the World Bank, the ITA was also developing new contracts.
Dix also reiterated the ITA’s policy of diversity and inclusivity: “The focus and energy of ITA is recognizing many peoples. It means all peoples, no matter what their political system, their religious beliefs, or how they like to shave their beard, do their hair or the clothes they wear, are all sharing a challenge now because the climate has changed.”
Additionally, the headline figures from the ITA’s latest world tunnel market survey were revealed at the press conference by ITA executive director Olivier Vion.
The quantity of increase in global value of projects was from €90bn (US$98bn) in 2016 and €125bn (US$136bn) in 2019 to €150bn (US$163bn) in 2022. China is by far the biggest market, accounting for almost 50% of value with €71bn worth of projects, while Europe’s projects are valued at €23bn (US$25bn).
Involving 1,000km of construction in Asia as well as 600km of tunnels in Europe, China has around 3,500km of tunnels under construction.
