The 123rd meeting of the CIB Board took place from June 28th – 30th 2021 with 22 Board members attending as well as guests from Purdue University and Kiewit Corporation.
The meeting was due to have been held in person and hosted by CIB Vice President Mark Hastak at Purdue University, USA, but the restrictions of the global pandemic made this impossible. We remained indebted to Mark for his virtual hosting, and for the introductory words of Professor Arvind Raman, Executive Associate Dean of Engineering. It was also great to welcome a guest keynote speaker, Jim Rowings of Kiewit Corporation, who despite the virtual format, was still able to give a powerful and inspiring presentation about collaboration between academia and industry. More on this in a separate news item here.
The main business conducted by the Board included:
Annual Accounts 2020
These were approved by the Board for presentation at the General Assembly on June 30th. They showed a bottom line deficit of €7,151, within €151 of budget and compared with a deficit in 2019 of €33,262. This was made up of a reduction in membership income €23,315 lower than budgeted (€36,685 lower than 2019), balanced by total expenditure which was €23,164 less than budgeted (€62,796 lower than 2019).
Report of the CIB Committee of Examination
The Board thankedthe two members of the Committee who have served for two years on this committee and would now stand down: Mieke Oostra and Piet van Staalduinen. The report was noted and was later presented at the General Assembly. Nominations to the Committee are invited for the next two years.
Annual Report 2021
The Board noted the publication of a new annual report to be presented at the General Assembly. It is available here: https://cibworld.org/cib-annual-report-2021/.
Third Party Funding Strategy
The Board noted progress by the task group chaired by Mark Hastak in four areas: a proposed workshop with Canadian financial institutions on risks to their investments arising from climate change; proposals to charitable Foundations including those in the sector; proposed collaboration with the United Nations; and a ‘CIB Day’ to be announced over the summer to take place in October 2022.
Strategy Workshop Sessions
The Board held two sessions in breakout groups to discuss strategies for 1) Growing 3rd party revenue, and 2) improving the value of CIB membership, especially for Full and Associate members. The proposals generated will be developed by the relevant committees over the next few weeks.
Membership Recruitment
A 12-month trial was approved of a free introductory membership offer, to be managed by the Membership and Communications Committee. More information on this will be released in the next few weeks.
World Building Congress 27th-30th June 2022
The original closing date for submission of abstracts was June 30th, 150 abstracts have so far been submitted and the deadline date will be slightly extended at the request of some of the CIB Commissions. There remains considerable uncertainty about the format of the event, whether it will be face-to-face or online only, and the Board is committed to a clear decision on this at its next meeting in October 2021.
New CIB Task Groups and partner journals
Two new groups were approved: 1) Timber Construction and 2) Nature-based solution for climate resilient buildings and communities. Four journals published by ASCE (the American Society of Civil Engineers) were approved for CIB Encouraged status.
The Board was delighted to good progress with announcements of the winners of the Sebestyén Future Leaders Award and Student Chapters funding allocations, and the call for a new CIB award to recognise the Best Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation Award [insert hyperlinks for all 3 of these news stories]. Volunteers are invited to be judges for this latter award, which will involve reviewing entries during October-November.
Early Career Researchers (ECR) network
The Board was delighted to the early events of this new network [insert hyperlink to say one of them] and to note an excellent programme of webinars for the next 12 months, with topics including writing funding proposals, becoming a better journal article reviewer, converting conference papers to journal articles, teaching in academia, and career advice and applying for research positions, as well as the next in our Meet the Editors series with Prof Mohan Kumaraswamy of Built Environment Project and Asset Management journal.
CIB Policy on Carbon Offsetting
The Board resolved that all official CIB travel by its Officers or Secretariat that is paid for by CIB must include full carbon offsetting of the related emissions in an appropriate way. This policy is also recommended to Officers, Board members, Members and all others paying for their own travel costs or having these paid by their own employer.
