The third annual Global Leadership Forum Summit, organised by FIDIC, brought together 100 of the world’s infrastructure leaders for ideas, inspiration and workable solutions.

The two-day event, held in Madrid from 10-11 April 2025, explored a wide range of topics, including the climate crisis and decarbonisation, future-proofed engineering, the next chapter for artificial intelligence and industry leadership.

 

FIDIC, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers, is the global representative body for national associations of consulting engineers and represents more than one million engineering professionals and 40,000 firms in 100 countries. Consult Australia is an active member.

 

“Like last year’s summit in Geneva, our discussions have taken place against a renewed backdrop of global volatility, uncertainty and complexity,” said the Global Leadership Forum’s Advisory Board Chair Bill Cox, outgoing CEO of Aurecon, in his closing address.

 

“While this backdrop creates challenges for us all, I do believe that by working together in a spirit of collaboration and keeping up the dialogue that we can develop the tangible outputs that we need over the coming months,” he said.

 

Bill singled out for praise the work to develop a common framework for decarbonisation of infrastructure. “The continuing work on a carbon collaboration program and framework, which began as a result of our very first Global Leadership Summit, is excellent and it’s great to see the progress being made on this crucial issue.”

 

FIDIC President Catherine Karakatsanis explored the “fast-moving area of digital and technology”, and the rise of AI, “which has real potential to transform the way we do business and our working practices and methods into the future”.

 

FIDIC’s President also noted that new members had joined the Global Leadership Forum from previously underrepresented regions, giving it a more even geographic spread.

 

“Interest, in particular, is coming from larger ‘national’ firms who do not have global reach, but who benefit from networking with similar-sized organisations and larger global firms,” she said.

 

“The GLF is all about leadership and providing a space for infrastructure leaders to discuss the key issues and challenges we face and to develop plans and strategies to solve them.

 

“This third summit has given us an excellent basis to make further progress over the next year and FIDIC really appreciates all those who have attended in Madrid and shared their insights and participated so enthusiastically.”

 

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