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The European Council of Civil Engineers represents the majority of the
associations representing individual professional civil engineers in European Union
(EU)
and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. Its 21 members in 19 different
countries together represent over 500,000 professional civil engineers.
ECCE was created
in 1985 through the common belief among European civil engineers that they are better
placed to advance Europe’s built environment and protect its natural environment by
working together. The Council works both at a pan-European and national level to advise
governments and industry and to foster uniformly high professional standards throughout
the region. It also collaborates with the world’s other major professional civil
engineering associations, particularly those of the USA and Japan. |
18th April 2002
The European
Council of Civil Engineers (ECCE) welcomes the opportunity afforded it in
commenting on the possibilities to promote funding for IST research within the
EU’s Sixth Framework Programme.
The
European Council of Civil Engineers has played an active role within the
Information and Communication Technologies Working Group since its inception.
Having reviewed the progress to date within Phase II of the ICT Working
Group we wish to suggest that the following be considered:
- If the projects presented to
the Working Group are to be developed to a sufficient level to ensure their
effectiveness throughout the industry, it appears clear that development
funding will be required. ECCE
believes that every effort should be made to ensure that such development
should take place in a harmonised manner; this may involve the promotion of
collaborative networks. If
standardised ICT is to operate
at a pan-European level, this will involve not only the collaboration of
those currently undertaking research, but also support to transfer
technology.
As a practical
exa,ple, it has further
been suggested on the basis of topics outlined in the interim report that if
work was carried out to make construction products IFC
compliant, they could then be downloaded from the web straight into a project
model facilitating the research work involved.
- e-government has been
demonstrated to the group in the form of electronic consultation.
The demonstration project existing within Germany illustrated the
possibility to further develop an electronic process to aid the
administration of planning permissions and procedures.
ECCE
considers that this development may be linked to parallel developments
throughout Europe which are trialling new electronic methods of consulting the
consumer in construction proposals. In
this way, a comprehensive system could be developed at a pan-European scale.
The resulting collaboration between industry and public authorities could
act as a flagship to promote e-government.
The development of virtual reality based on games-technology and
web-based technologies offer accessible means to create an electronic
presentation and process which will be easily understood by members of the
public.
- ECCE believes that
inter-disciplinary work should be encouraged and facilitated within the
construction sector. Initiatives
which exist at a national level such as the U.K. based Teamworks
demonstration project should be encouraged to promote increased efficiencies
in the construction process. The
‘Teamworks’ initiative mentioned above involves promotion of
information-sharing and collaborative working.
It is important that designers, product suppliers, cost management
consultants, contracting and consulting engineers as well as software
developers should work together on projects to ensure the integration of ICT
in the construction process.
- In considering how to
promote health and safety standards, experts in the field have sugggested
that the application of object technology could be applied to health and
safety regulations, and could eventually
be applied to building regulations with clear advantages to the sector.
- As a body
which represents the professional civil engineer, ECCE believes that
awareness should be raised of the possible advantages to be obtained from
e-learning, in particular as a means of enabling continuing professional
development. The advantages and
disadvantages of this type of learning should be made clear to enable
appropriately structured learning systems to be developed, in particular for
small and medium-sized enterprises.
ECCE will be
pleased to comment further on these proposals.
On behalf of the European Council of
Civil Engineers
| Diana E Maxwell, |
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Secretary General |
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