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Opening Address
Address by Eigil Steen Pedersen, FIDIC President
September 2002

Mr. Governor Juárez Cisneros, Mayor Seferino Torreblanca Galindo, Viceadmiral Lazero Cornejo Mendez, President Javier Prieto de la Fuente, President Oscar Alvarez de la Cuadra, Engineer Luis Salazar, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to open this conference in the company of such distinguished guests. For us in FIDIC´s leadership - and indeed for our Méxican colleagues , who have prepared this event - this is the ultimate culmination of several years´ hard work.

It is only the second time in FIDIC´s 89 year history, that the conference takes place in a developing country, but certainly not the last. With approximately half of our member associations in developing countries or emerging economies we see the strengthening of their national industries as a prerequisite for a global development of the Consulting Engineering industry, which again- in all modesty- may be said to be an indispensable factor in development of the global society at large.

( Ladies and gentlemen, you may now have realized that Spanish is certainly not my mother tongue, so I beg you to accept that I switch to English which is a bit closer to home)

We have chosen the combined theme of Capacity Building and Business Integrity this year. Both are necessary components in the development of any society, North or South, East or West.

In this information age knowledge is power, and the "jobs of the future" will be knowledge based jobs. Many countries have pools of well educated citizens, but you often see that governments have failed to develop sustainable, knowledge-based employment opportunities. A joint effort between private industry and government is therefore urgently required.

Capacity Building has been a theme within FIDIC- and with the international financing - and development institutions - for quite some time, but over the last 4 years we have tried to bring us into a working phase with the development of concrete proposals for action- by all parties involved. We look forward to the presentation of the latest proposals at this conference and the following discussions, which may hopefully complement and strengthen our proposals and inspire to concrete action in all corners.

At a brief glance you might believe that Capacity Building is mainly related to the developing world.
Our surveys prior to this work have clearly indicated that this is certainly not the case. Many countries in the developed world could benefit highly from some of the proposed initiatives. In any case, the development and strengthening of a Consulting Engineering Industry at a global level will enable an increased participation of consulting engineers to a higher degree than now within our traditional fields of work as well as with a host of new services.

Business Integrity has also been a natural and indispensable part of our daily life for many years. However the global development has over the last decades shown a disturbing deterioration in all corners of society- an evil which must be fought. A global consensus has developed over the last decade, saying that corruption is not only wrong, but also destructive to economic development and free market systems in an era of globalization.

In FIDIC we have noted with appreciation, that the international financing institutions have all actively involved themselves in the combat of corruption, as have many national governments and multinational companies. I was especially pleased to learn about México´s strong initiative in transparency and accountability launched when President Vicente Fox took office in December 2000.

Here again FIDIC took action some years back, in fact starting at our conference in Istanbul in 1995, but really taking speed, when in 1998 dr. Ochoa from this country, México, agreed to head a task force with the duty to come up with an Integrity Management System for our industry. This work has been strongly supported - and I believe appreciated - by several International Financing Institutions and national governments. It was presented last year in a test edition- and will now be the other main topic of this conference.

A few weeks back I spent some time in Southern Africa with The World Summit in Johannesburg as the main event. Much has already been said - positive and negative - about this event and its conclusions, and no doubt a lot more will come. Certainly, there will also be a thorough post-evaluation in order to determine whether such a mega-event shall ever be repeated.

It was FIDIC´s - and also personally my own first experience from participation in this type of event. I appreciate many of the weaknesses in the detailed proceedings and the conclusions, but I have come to a generally positive overall evaluation of its results. We will discuss the details over the next days, but here I would like to mention that FIDIC´s top of the agenda items over the past few years: Sustainable Development, Capacity Building and the Fight Against Corruption, which have all during the past couple of years been supported by action papers, training manuals etc, seem to be able to provide a strong support to the work involved in meeting the main goals set at the Summit.

We had the opportunity to present papers on all these issues, and I think that we can be proud to state that our Industry is well prepared to take a central role in the implementation, be a dialogue partner between governments, NGO´s and the private sector, who is clearly seen now to take an important and responsible part in a sustainable development of society.

It is my hope that the next 3 days together here in Acapulco may assist all of us to participate in a stronger way in this development in the future - to the benefit of society- but as important , at least for the practising consulting engineers present here- to strengthen the further development of our companies.

A couple of years back, my predecessor, Wayne Bowes of Canada, opened this conference in Honolulu by issuing a shark warning- should attendants prefer the beautiful Waikiki beach to the conference attendance. I have not received similar warnings for the Acapulco waters, and I am certainly aware of the immense competition offered by this environment. But I am also sure, that the topics to be dealt with here are of such importance to all of us, that you would hate to be out there rather than miss a minute of these sessions.

In any case, the organisers have made a wonderful programme, off sessions, for delegates as well as our accompanying persons, enabling you to see Acapulco and surroundings. I hope that you will enjoy the entire programme and wish you all a successful conference.

28 August 2002