Our History
The Commonwealth at 75
Written for The Commonwealth at 75 in 2024 by CEC Past President Paul Jowitt
Commonwealth Engineers Council: Our History
The war had just ended. After years of strife and destruction it was a time for renewal and a time to secure a better and safer future. And from it sprang the United Nations, WHO and UNESCO and many other progressive organisations, among them the Commonwealth Engineers Council (CEC).
In the autumn of 1945, the Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Mr E Graham Clark, suggested to the Presidents of the Institutions of Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers that a conference of Commonwealth Engineering Institutions should be held to increase collaboration and co-operation between them. There was a lot of rebuilding to do!
And so in September 1946 representatives of the engineering institutions in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK met in London to discuss matters of common interest. Moreover it was agreed to establish the Commonwealth Engineering Conference (CEC) – later renamed the Commonwealth Engineers Council. They resolved to meet on a regular basis.
Clark’s vision underpins CEC over 75 years later.
Initially, CEC Meetings were held on a four-yearly cycle in countries of the Commonwealth.
• Johannesburg, South Africa 1950
• London, UK 1954
• Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia (including New Zealand) 1958
• Montreal, Canada 1962
• London, UK 1966
In 1968, CEC along with the Federation of Arab Engineers (FAE), the Pan American Federation of Engineers Society (UPADI) and the European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI) were the founder Members of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO). It’s worth noting that ICE Secretary E Graham Clark had also played a key role in establishing FEANI; he was truly an internationalist and visionary of engineering.
The pattern of meetings changed from a four-year cycle to a two-year cycle when the Commonwealth Foundation (which had been founded in 1966) recognised CEC as a Commonwealth Professional Association to which it could grant funds so that representatives could attend meetings. Between 1969 and 1985 CEC Meetings were held in Delhi, London (twice), Accra, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Harare, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Much of CEC’s activities at this time focussed on Engineering Education and was managed through CEC’s Commonwealth Board on Engineering Education and Training (CBEET).
The 1977 meeting in London had an open seminar on ‘Engineers for the 21st century’, the Trinidad meeting in 1981 examined ‘Engineering in the Commonwealth’, the 1983 meeting in Harare broadened the agenda to look at the ‘impact that engineers and modern technology can have on the socioeconomic system’, and in Colombo in 1985 the focus was on the ‘role of engineers in agriculture’. This was all long before the Brundtland definition of Sustainable Development!
The 1987 meeting in Canada coincided with the centennial celebrations of engineering as an organized profession, coupled with the founding of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers. By this time CEC had expanded, with the addition of Bangladesh, the Council of Caribbean Engineering Institutions, Cyprus, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Western Samoa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In more recent years, CEC annual meetings have been held during the WFEO General Assembly in different cities each year, such as Prague (2023), Melbourne (2019), London (2018), Rome (2017), Lima, (2016) and Kyoto (2015).
In the early years, the IEE supported the secretariat of CEC, then the (UK) Council of Engineering Institutions (CEI) until 1983 and since then by the ICE. The Chair of CEC’s meetings was informally held by the current chair of the CEI. But in 1987, CEC decided to elect its President (Chair) directly from its member institutions. Professor Tan Sri Datuk Chin Fung Kee was elected, the first Malaysian and the first non-British Chairman in 1987. In 1993 Chin Fung Kee was succeeded by another Malaysian, Dato Lee Yee Cheong, former President of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia. Dato Lee was very energetic in his service to CEC and in 1996 he invited Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to CEC’s 50th Anniversary Conference on Engineering for Sustainability. Her Majesty graciously attended the pre-Banquet Reception at the ICE in Great George Street. In 2001 Dato Lee handed over the CEC Presidency to former ICE President Tony Ridley.
By the turn of the millennium, CEC’s membership included almost all the Commonwealth countries that had an organised body of professional engineers and their own Professional Institutions. Of course, this didn’t always include many small and island developing states which often relied on other Commonwealth institutions and CEC for professional engineering expertise.
But the new millennium brought other difficulties for such as CEC. The positive role and value of the Commonwealth was not as much to the fore as it should have been and yet many Commonwealth nations and states remained financially weak. CEC had moved to a subscription model some years earlier but it some of its members were finding it difficult to pay them and some others didn’t see the need. A decision was made for CEC to become a more virtual organisation, charge no fees and rely on such as WFEO meetings for engineers from the Commonwealth to meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. The ICE continued to underpin CEC’s admin costs. For pragmatic reasons, all Commonwealth Engineering Institutions were deemed to be members of CEC. This did cause some issues in some quarters!
In 2009, Tony Ridley stood down as CEC President, handing over briefly to former ICE Director General Tom Foulkes. ICE Past President Professor Paul Jowitt became CEC President in 2013. In 2016 the Royal Academy of Engineering secured a large grant from the Global Challenges Research Fund for the Africa Catalyst Project to build engineering capacity in Africa. Under Jowitt’s leadership, CEC partnered a number of grants under this heading, culminating in a project with the Federation of African Engineering Organizations (FAEO) and the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) to develop Infrastructure Report Cards for a number of countries in Sub-Sharan Africa, including Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. In 2018 CEC played a key role in the Global Engineering Congress hosted by the ICE in London to celebrate the ICE’s 200th anniversary. CEC held a Round Table during this meeting to examine “Scaling it Up - Project delivery in developing economies”. The event was chaired by Paul Jowitt with Panel Members Trudy Morgan (President, Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers), Yolanda Chakava (Infrastructure Adviser, DfID, Nairobi – and founder of the Haki Water Project, Kibera, Nairobi), and Martin van Veelen (Past President, Federation of African Engineering Organisations and SAICE)
In 2020, CEC partnered with the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) and the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) to provide a series of CPD activities in the lead up to the virtual CHOGM meeting that had been scheduled to meet in Kigali, Rwanda, but which had been hit Covid. As part of the Commonwealth Sustainable Urbanisation Programme, CEC together with UNESCO and the ICE hosted an on-line event on ‘Infrastructure Led Community Resilience’
In 2019, CEC met during at the WFEO General Assembly in Melbourne in 2019, CEC took the decision to return to a more structured membership. This work was completed in 2023 at the CEC meeting held during the WFEO World Engineering Convention in Prague, and at which Dawn Bonfield succeeded Paul Jowitt as CEC President. This was a major step forward – Dawn is CEC’s first female President and has represented CEC at various COP meetings in previous years.
CEC is a voice for engineering in the Commonwealth. CEC’s members comprise Professional Engineering Institutions and allied associations from across the Commonwealth, along with a range of corresponding members who all share CEC’s vision to promote and support engineers throughout the Commonwealth to address the global issues of climate change and the UN SDGs and to do so through mutual cooperation. CEC’s Patron is Barry J Grear AO, Past President of WFEO and Engineers Australia.
And Membership of CEC is about being part of this. All those who share these objectives are welcome!
Acknowledgments: 'Commonwealth Engineers' Council - its past and its future' by Gwilym Roberts CBE (Proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers, Part 1, 1988, 84, April pp 331-336); personal communications from former CEC President Dato Lee Yee Cheong; and personal recollections by immediate past CEC President Professor Paul W Jowitt CBE.
https://www.commonwealthengineers.org/our-history.html
Written for The Commonwealth at 75 in 2024 by CEC Past President Paul Jowitt
Commonwealth Engineers Council: Our History
The war had just ended. After years of strife and destruction it was a time for renewal and a time to secure a better and safer future. And from it sprang the United Nations, WHO and UNESCO and many other progressive organisations, among them the Commonwealth Engineers Council (CEC).
In the autumn of 1945, the Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Mr E Graham Clark, suggested to the Presidents of the Institutions of Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers that a conference of Commonwealth Engineering Institutions should be held to increase collaboration and co-operation between them. There was a lot of rebuilding to do!
And so in September 1946 representatives of the engineering institutions in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK met in London to discuss matters of common interest. Moreover it was agreed to establish the Commonwealth Engineering Conference (CEC) – later renamed the Commonwealth Engineers Council. They resolved to meet on a regular basis.
Clark’s vision underpins CEC over 75 years later.
Initially, CEC Meetings were held on a four-yearly cycle in countries of the Commonwealth.
• Johannesburg, South Africa 1950
• London, UK 1954
• Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia (including New Zealand) 1958
• Montreal, Canada 1962
• London, UK 1966
In 1968, CEC along with the Federation of Arab Engineers (FAE), the Pan American Federation of Engineers Society (UPADI) and the European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI) were the founder Members of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO). It’s worth noting that ICE Secretary E Graham Clark had also played a key role in establishing FEANI; he was truly an internationalist and visionary of engineering.
The pattern of meetings changed from a four-year cycle to a two-year cycle when the Commonwealth Foundation (which had been founded in 1966) recognised CEC as a Commonwealth Professional Association to which it could grant funds so that representatives could attend meetings. Between 1969 and 1985 CEC Meetings were held in Delhi, London (twice), Accra, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Harare, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Much of CEC’s activities at this time focussed on Engineering Education and was managed through CEC’s Commonwealth Board on Engineering Education and Training (CBEET).
The 1977 meeting in London had an open seminar on ‘Engineers for the 21st century’, the Trinidad meeting in 1981 examined ‘Engineering in the Commonwealth’, the 1983 meeting in Harare broadened the agenda to look at the ‘impact that engineers and modern technology can have on the socioeconomic system’, and in Colombo in 1985 the focus was on the ‘role of engineers in agriculture’. This was all long before the Brundtland definition of Sustainable Development!
The 1987 meeting in Canada coincided with the centennial celebrations of engineering as an organized profession, coupled with the founding of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers. By this time CEC had expanded, with the addition of Bangladesh, the Council of Caribbean Engineering Institutions, Cyprus, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Western Samoa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In more recent years, CEC annual meetings have been held during the WFEO General Assembly in different cities each year, such as Prague (2023), Melbourne (2019), London (2018), Rome (2017), Lima, (2016) and Kyoto (2015).
In the early years, the IEE supported the secretariat of CEC, then the (UK) Council of Engineering Institutions (CEI) until 1983 and since then by the ICE. The Chair of CEC’s meetings was informally held by the current chair of the CEI. But in 1987, CEC decided to elect its President (Chair) directly from its member institutions. Professor Tan Sri Datuk Chin Fung Kee was elected, the first Malaysian and the first non-British Chairman in 1987. In 1993 Chin Fung Kee was succeeded by another Malaysian, Dato Lee Yee Cheong, former President of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia. Dato Lee was very energetic in his service to CEC and in 1996 he invited Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to CEC’s 50th Anniversary Conference on Engineering for Sustainability. Her Majesty graciously attended the pre-Banquet Reception at the ICE in Great George Street. In 2001 Dato Lee handed over the CEC Presidency to former ICE President Tony Ridley.
By the turn of the millennium, CEC’s membership included almost all the Commonwealth countries that had an organised body of professional engineers and their own Professional Institutions. Of course, this didn’t always include many small and island developing states which often relied on other Commonwealth institutions and CEC for professional engineering expertise.
But the new millennium brought other difficulties for such as CEC. The positive role and value of the Commonwealth was not as much to the fore as it should have been and yet many Commonwealth nations and states remained financially weak. CEC had moved to a subscription model some years earlier but it some of its members were finding it difficult to pay them and some others didn’t see the need. A decision was made for CEC to become a more virtual organisation, charge no fees and rely on such as WFEO meetings for engineers from the Commonwealth to meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. The ICE continued to underpin CEC’s admin costs. For pragmatic reasons, all Commonwealth Engineering Institutions were deemed to be members of CEC. This did cause some issues in some quarters!
In 2009, Tony Ridley stood down as CEC President, handing over briefly to former ICE Director General Tom Foulkes. ICE Past President Professor Paul Jowitt became CEC President in 2013. In 2016 the Royal Academy of Engineering secured a large grant from the Global Challenges Research Fund for the Africa Catalyst Project to build engineering capacity in Africa. Under Jowitt’s leadership, CEC partnered a number of grants under this heading, culminating in a project with the Federation of African Engineering Organizations (FAEO) and the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) to develop Infrastructure Report Cards for a number of countries in Sub-Sharan Africa, including Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. In 2018 CEC played a key role in the Global Engineering Congress hosted by the ICE in London to celebrate the ICE’s 200th anniversary. CEC held a Round Table during this meeting to examine “Scaling it Up - Project delivery in developing economies”. The event was chaired by Paul Jowitt with Panel Members Trudy Morgan (President, Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers), Yolanda Chakava (Infrastructure Adviser, DfID, Nairobi – and founder of the Haki Water Project, Kibera, Nairobi), and Martin van Veelen (Past President, Federation of African Engineering Organisations and SAICE)
In 2020, CEC partnered with the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) and the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) to provide a series of CPD activities in the lead up to the virtual CHOGM meeting that had been scheduled to meet in Kigali, Rwanda, but which had been hit Covid. As part of the Commonwealth Sustainable Urbanisation Programme, CEC together with UNESCO and the ICE hosted an on-line event on ‘Infrastructure Led Community Resilience’
In 2019, CEC met during at the WFEO General Assembly in Melbourne in 2019, CEC took the decision to return to a more structured membership. This work was completed in 2023 at the CEC meeting held during the WFEO World Engineering Convention in Prague, and at which Dawn Bonfield succeeded Paul Jowitt as CEC President. This was a major step forward – Dawn is CEC’s first female President and has represented CEC at various COP meetings in previous years.
CEC is a voice for engineering in the Commonwealth. CEC’s members comprise Professional Engineering Institutions and allied associations from across the Commonwealth, along with a range of corresponding members who all share CEC’s vision to promote and support engineers throughout the Commonwealth to address the global issues of climate change and the UN SDGs and to do so through mutual cooperation. CEC’s Patron is Barry J Grear AO, Past President of WFEO and Engineers Australia.
And Membership of CEC is about being part of this. All those who share these objectives are welcome!
Acknowledgments: 'Commonwealth Engineers' Council - its past and its future' by Gwilym Roberts CBE (Proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers, Part 1, 1988, 84, April pp 331-336); personal communications from former CEC President Dato Lee Yee Cheong; and personal recollections by immediate past CEC President Professor Paul W Jowitt CBE.
https://www.commonwealthengineers.org/our-history.html
