Massey University hosts productive CIB Board meeting

The 130th meeting of the CIB Board was hosted by CIB Full member Massey University from November 20th-24th 2023, with Professor Monty Sutrisna welcoming Board members to Auckland, New Zealand. The business was conducted in hybrid format with more than half the members participating online.  

Like other organisations CIB has a challenge in helping its Board members to justify the cost, time and carbon associated with travel to its meetings and conferences, and we need to adapt and embrace the zeitgeist. Our focus is on ensuring that face-to-face meetings or conference are as high value as possible, and we emphasise that they provide a far superior environment to online for strategic discussion and collaboration, whilst ensuring that online meetings are deployed to deliver.

What seems clear is that a hybrid format is the least satisfactory for all concerned, with the face-to-face discussions depleted by fewer people attending, whilst online participants miss out on the colour, depth and breadth of discussion as well as the continuation of discussions well into the night and over breakfast – even when the technology works flawlessly. Thus the next CIB Board meeting will be held entirely online in March 2024 with the aspiration that more Board members will then be able prioritise attendance in person at Tsinghua University, Beijing, in June. 

Board business

Over 13 hours of formal business was conducted, and productive progress made with the Board’s strategic priorities: 

• Membership recruitment and upgrade
• Industry Advisory Group 
• Increase collaborative research… 
• Visiting Global Scholar programme, now launched
• CIB’s Recognised and Encouraged journals 
• Third-party funding including opportunities for global research consortia under CIB’s banner 
• Women in construction as a new Task Group. 

All the above will be the focus of news updates early in 2024. 

Commission Coordinators

We were also pleased to approve the following new Commission Coordinators, who will each be highlighted in separate profile features on this website over the next few weeks. We congratulate them all and look forward to working with them all to further energise their Commissions. 

• TG097: Dr Zahra Jandaghian, National Research Council of Canada 
• W107: Professor Wellington Didibhuku Thwala, University of South Africa 
• W120: Professor Temitope Egbelakin, University of Newcastle, Australia 
• W070: 
  Dr. Prof Sarel Lavy, Texas A&M University 
  Dr. Associate Professor Nora Johanne Klungseth, NTNU, Faculty of Engineering 
  Dr. Professor Carmel Lindkvist, NTNU, Faculty of Architecture and Design 
• W123: – Professor John Smallwood, Nelson Mandela University 

Early Career Researchers

Similarly, an exciting programme of CIB webinars was confirmed for Early Career Researchers, again more on these will appear in separate features on the website: 

Finally, we were delighted to approve the Memorandum of Understanding with Purdue University to host the CIB World Building Congress 2025, for which planning is well underway with four meetings of the Scientific Committee already held. The conference website and Call for Abstracts were both launched on Day 1 of the Board meeting.  

Other matters

As well as the main business the Board members were able to meet with local faculty and the vibrant CIB Student Chapter of Massey University, including award winners, and to meet leaders of the New Zealand construction sector over dinner. We also benefited from a detailed ‘warts-and-all’ presentation from Tamaki Makaurau Recovery Office, which it is hoped will lead to a new project or Task Group looking at sharing lessons learned from non-tidal flooding disasters around the globe. CIB members with relevant case studies or other value to contribute should contact CIB CEO Don Ward in the first instance. 

Don Ward 
November 2023