Opening address

The language used in Royal Charters of the 1820s may sound grandiose and quaint to modern ears; but the 'job description' for civil engineers and the aims of the Institution of Civil Engineers are made clear: ' that species of knowledge which constitutes the profession of a Civil Engineer, being the art of directing the Great Sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states both for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation and docks, for internal intercourse and exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce, and in the construction and adaptation of machinery, and in the drainage of cities and towns/ Engineers have lived up to this specification over the century and a half since that time: using nature, not abusing it; accepting that the land, the rivers and the sea have a vast purifying capacity which can be safely used, but must not be overloaded.