History
In the beginning
In 1946 a conference, organised by ICE, IMechE and IEE, took place in London bringing together representatives from Commonwealth Engineering Institutions with an aim of extending the links built up during the 1939-45 war. They were joined by delegates from Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand. On that day the Commonwealth Engineers' Council, one of the first and largest in membership of the Commonwealth-wide Professional Associations, was formed.
Growing membership
By 1980 the membership had grown from six to fourteen. Today CEC spans five continents, with forty-five members,one of which - the Council of Caribbean Engineering Organisations - is composed of twelve Commonwealth states.
The CEC Central Secretariat is hosted by the Institution of Civil Engineers and based in London.
Activity
In the past CEC has run a successful series of conferences on Sustainable Development. A conference in Jamaica, in 1993, led to a conference held in London in 1996, on Engineering to Survive: Global Solutions for Sustainable Development. Her Majesty The Queen attended the opening reception, as did the Secretary General of the Commonwealth. This was the keynote conference for a special series of five regional conferences across the world over eighteen months on different aspects of the problem of sustainable development, culminating in a final conference in Penang, Malaysia in 1997.
The CEC hosted the Commonwealth Young Professionals Millennium Conference: The Alleviation of Poverty in London in March 2000. This conference, opened by HRH The Princess Royal, was attended by over 150 young people from 28 countries in the Commonwealth.
CEC also host workshops, along with its partners in Built Environment Professions in the Commonwealth (BEPIC), at the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings in order to influence and lobby national governments. Following on from successful participation at CHOGM in Kampala during November 2007, in which CEC presented a workshop on sustainable urban development, the Council is now developing plans for its attendance at the 2009 CHOGM, to be held in Trinidad and Tobago.
In between these major events, CEC has encouraged further regional conferences and workshops in developing countries to help individual engineers improve their knowledge and competence. Successful workshops and conferences have been held in South and South East Asia, and Central and East Africa on subjects such as the development of low-cost teaching material and textbooks for developing countries.
