Opening Session

Engineering to Survive

I would like to stress that this is very much a collaborative venture. Sustainable Development can never be achieved unless all branches of the engineering profession exert themselves in a concerted effort to achieve targets, difficult though they may be to define. All engineering disciplines must be fully in play, and I think that will be well demonstrated in our papers in the next two days. This is why from the outset the principal Institutions based in the United Kingdom, the Institutions of Civil Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, and Chemical Engineers, have collaborated and committed significant resources to ensure what I might call a 'whole' engineer approach. I would like to thank my fellow Presidents and Secretariats for their support throughout the preparation for our Conference, and indeed during the Conference various Presidents or their representatives will be chairing each session.