When global infrastructure leaders from across the consultancy and engineering sector meet in Madrid on 10-11 April 2025 at the third annual Global Leadership Forum (GLF) Summit, they will be discussing the key infrastructure issues that matter during two days of talks, debates and discussions with industry leaders and opinion formers.
The agenda for the high-level summit includes a keynote address from Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, former deputy chief medical officer for the UK and a leading public health specialist with a clinical background in emergency medicine, anaesthesia and infectious diseases. Well known for his leadership role during the Covid-19 pandemic, during his keynote address Van-Tam will explore how, in a global crisis, actions were achieved at a pace previously unimaginable. The insights and experiences he will share with around 100 of the world’s most influential infrastructure leaders will offer key learnings to the sector to help it speed up progress in areas such as climate change, growth, AI and addressing the sector skills shortage.
Attendees at the summit will also hear from His Excellency Maysarah Mahmoud Salim Eid, director general of the Abu Dhabi Projects and Infrastructure Centre (ADPIC), who will speak on Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Infrastructure as a Catalyst for Social Welfare, Economic Diversification Sustainability and Innovation. He will discuss the context of infrastructure as going beyond just physical assets and explore its role as a catalyst for society, economic diversification, sustainability and innovation. As global concerns about improving economic growth are on the rise, there is a real possibility that the above become secondary requirements, or even stagnate, halting global progress and constraining future economic opportunities. His Excellency will discuss how strategic investments can not only attract new industries, foster entrepreneurship, create skilled jobs while still driving social welfare,economic diversification, sustainability and innovation, drawing in challenging global economic circumstances based on experiences from Abu Dhabi. This session will offer insights for governments and organisations looking to leverage infrastructure to build more resilient, diversified economies.
Research partners, the EDHEC Climate Institute (ECI) and the ACEC Research Institute, are also due to address the summit in Madrid. Robert Arnold, sustainability research director at the EDHEC business school, will highlight the database they have developed for assessing and comparing the costs and effectiveness of strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing weather resilience across a comprehensive range of infrastructure assets. This equips investors, asset managers, and asset operators with actionable insights into how to adapt infrastructure assets to thrive in a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.
Mike Carragher, chair of the ACEC Research Institute and incoming chair Steve Lefton will talk about Future-Proofing Engineering: AI, Workforce and the Firm of 2035. The ACEC Research Institute’s Firm of the Future – 2035 research is built on insights from over 70 US engineering industry leaders who explored 44 future scenarios to understand the evolving business landscape. This groundbreaking research has identified key themes that will shape the industry in the coming years, fuelling a first-of-its-kind, engineering future-focused research effort. Summit attendees will gain critical insights into how AI and workforce dynamics are transforming the industry.
There will also be discussions on Artificial Intelligence, the next chapter, following up the 2024 FIDC/EY industry report on the role of AI in infrastructure and its potential to transform the sector by optimising processes, reducing costs and enhancing safety in infrastructure projects. Summit attendees will explore the progress made in the sector over the past year and share learnings for leadership by showcasing examples from around the world in collaboration with clients. Speakers in this session include Steve Lewis, partner – infrastructure and capital project advisory at EY (Hong Kong), Gavin McLaughlin, GSI client director – Northern EMEA at Nvidia (UK) and Julien Moutte, chief technology officer at Bentley Systems (Spain).
The summit will also debate whether the industry is making progress at the right pace and ask whether a paradigm shift in culture is needed to speed up the pace with which the sector solves the challenges it faces. This session will include a call to action to address the skills gap from Jane Mutulili, chair of the Association of Consulting Engineers of Kenya.
Day two of the summit will include the presentation of the next phase of the work of the Global Leadership Forum’s Carbon Collaboration Initiative, which was conceived by members of the GLF. This work, being spearheaded by the CEOs from some of the world’s largest consulting engineering firms, aims to develop a common, replicable and standardised process of calculation and disclosure of embodied and operational CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions related to infrastructure projects.
Speakers in the Carbon Collaboration Initiative session include Jens Peter Saul, group CEO of Rambøll Group, Mike Haigh, former chief executive of Mott MacDonald, Andreas Linnet, decarbonisation lead and senior sustainability engineer at Rambøll Group, Maria Manidaki, director, decarbonisation at Mott MacDonald and Heleni Pantelidou, associate director for infrastructure at Arup.
The summit’s closing session will ask How do we ensure greater collaboration between consultants, contractors and their supply chain? A panel discussion between delegates representing consulting engineers, construction firms and supply chain representatives will include Craig Schwitter, global board chair and senior partner at Buro Happold (USA), Fidel Angel Saenz de Ormijana from Ferrovial Construction (Spain), Angel Sanchez Bartolome, chief technical officer at Ferrovial Construction (Spain) and a representative from Autodesk (UK).
The summit wrap-up will be piloted by Bill Cox, GLF advisory board chair and CEO of Aurecon (Australia) and Catherine Karakatsanis, FIDIC president and COO of Morrison Hershfield, now Stantec (Canada), who will sum up the event and highlight key takeaways from the two days of discussions.
The invitation-only event for around 100 industry leaders will provide a meaningful forum for leaders in the global infrastructure sector to connect with their peers from around the world to share knowledge and to discuss solutions to the major issues facing them, their leadership teams and their organisations.
The GLF summit in Madrid is set to be a key event in the consultancy and engineering calendar for 2025 and those wishing to register for this invite-only event can apply using the link below.
