Mads Brandt Rasmussen, an associate project and market director with COWI in Denmark, has been unveiled as the winner of the FIDIC 2024 Future Leaders Award at an awards ceremony held in Geneva on 10 September 2024.
The FIDIC Future Leaders Awards acknowledge and promote the outstanding achievements of future leaders in the consulting engineering industry worldwide and also encourage effective participation of future leaders in FIDIC. Announcing the winner of the award, Dr Rodrigo Juárez, chair of the FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council and a consultant with FOA Consultores in Mexico, said: “This year, we were delighted by the number of high-quality submissions from candidates across the globe and this truly global representation underscores the vast pool of talent and innovation that is driving the future of our industry.”
“Mads is an all-rounder who excels both in his technical prowess and in his contribution to wider society. He has helped to ensure a wider understanding of key regulations in the rail sector in his country and ensured that more engineers in the industry understand the complexities of railway projects compared to other types of projects. Mads is also actively involved in visiting educational institutions to talk about what it is like to be an engineer in the industry with the aim of attracting newly graduated engineers to the consulting engineering industry.
“Furthermore, his involvement in Future Leaders groups and further involvement with the Danish Association of Consulting Engineers are outstanding. Our winner certainly shows what being a future and current leader in the Consulting Engineering industry is, and he is a truly worthy recipient of this award.”
Commenting on the 2024 awards, FIDIC president Catherine Karakatsanis said: “The Future Leaders Award is a particularly sought after accolade and reflects the increasing prestige and importance of the FIDIC Future Leaders programme which. The winners of this awards are truly ‘ones to watch’ for the future and I’m sure that Mads will be no exception.”
Speaking after winning his award, Mads Brandt Rasmussen said: “I am humbled and delighted to accept this award and would like to thank Henrik Winther from COWI and Henrik Garver from the Danish Association of Consulting Engineers for giving me the chance to be nominated for the award. Also, I need to say a huge thank you to Rodrigo Juarez for all his hard work chairing the FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council.
Two highly commended prizes were also given in this year’s awards. They went to Rahim Ahmad, manager, construction services at Associated Engineering in Canada and to Dilini Gamage, a civil engineer with the Ceylon Electricity Board in Sri Lanka.
The image above shows Mads Brandt Rasmussen, winner of the 2024 Future Leaders Award (centre), Dr Rodrigo Juárez, chair of the FIDIC Future Leaders Advisory Council (left) and FIDIC president Catherine Karakatsanis.