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Geoff French had only been president for a few hours when Impact spoke with him, and he was already looking at key challenges to address.
“I’m honoured and delighted to have been elected. But I feel a little humble actually. To have a lot of people say to you that they think the organisation will be safe in your hands is an excellent reminder of my responsibilities.
“We know there are things that have to be addressed and there is no magic wand here for FIDIC’s core issues of sustainability, integrity and quality. Communications came up at the conference a lot as well. Today’s world demands that we address these issues all the more urgently than we have managed to in the past. That’s the challenge going forward. We have to respond and react faster.
“We can start at one end of that issue and say the website is in urgent need of upgrading. But we are happy to accept that as we have already set improvements in motion. We haven’t really exploited social media yet. That is increasingly important, offering the ability to use modern communications to contact faster not only our member associations but member firms and key individuals within them.
“Making sure we send people information that is of interest to them is exactly the same challenge as faced by ACE, but with a global dimension at FIDIC. The old days of sitting back and sending around regular circulars have long gone. But we’ve yet to come up with a methodology that definitely gets our message to as many people as possible.”
With the global economy struggling with its return to growth after the credit crunch, now is a tough time for FIDIC to bring together 89 member associations from around the world. However, Geoff French is pleased to report that attitudes in Davos were still reasonably positive.
“There was optimism at the conference this year. There was a view, especially in the western associations, that things are not great. But people were far from downbeat about the medium term future. Some of the fast growing countries, like China and India, are much more bullish about their prospects and those of our global industry.”
Of course, delegates had some concerns about wider implications of the downturn.
“People were still very concerned that the downturn must not mean we take our eyes off over-riding issues, things like sustainability, like the importance of quality and the issue of integrity.
“There was a feeling at the conference that the issue of integrity is now much higher on the agenda everywhere. We hope that that this awareness will result in more action. That higher focus comes about because of things like the position that the multi-lateral development banks are adopting on this issue.
“What FIDIC wants to do is introduce a system of integrity management. That would be one measure for demonstrating that a firm is serious about integrity and serious about fighting corruption. So FIDIC is introducing a new integrity management system and we are talking to the banks about how to get recognition for the new system.”
The multi-lateral banks were well represented in Davos this year. While Geoff recognises that FIDIC’s focus is very much its own industry, he is already planning to widen discussions for the centenary in 2013.
“What we are trying to do for the centenary conference in Barcelona in 2013 is to attract clients, developers and funders to come along to make it an even more comprehensive event.”
As the voice of an historically global industry, FIDIC continues to grow and was pleased to add both Mozambique and Palestine as its newest member associations this year. The new president takes this as a big sign of success.
“I think it is interesting that FIDIC attracts member associations from both ends of the spectrum. We have members like ACE that have been established for nearly one hundred years who still find it very useful to be members. And we have very young associations with very young firms as their members who also want to be part of FIDIC’s global community. That is a very strong endorsement for FIDIC.”
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