The third annual Global Leadership Forum Summit, organised by FIDIC, which took place in Madrid this week, saw around 100 of the world’s infrastructure leaders coming together to collaborate to discuss workable solutions to the key challenges facing the industry and the planet.
Leaders attending the two-day event from 10-11 April 2025 discussed the central issue of change and how to make it happen, as well as the climate crisis and decarbonisation, future proofing engineering, the next chapter for AI, carbon management and the net zero transition, how the industry works better together – and, crucially, the leadership needed to make that happen.
The two-day summit in Madrid was a mix of keynote, panel discussions and breakout sessions where delegates engaged with one another and participated in some lively and thought-provoking debates. “Like last year’s summit in Geneva, our discussions have taken place against a renewed backdrop of global volatility, uncertainty and complexity,” said GLF advisory board chair Bill Cox, CEO of Aurecon, in his closing address to the summit.
“While this backdrop creates challenges for us all, I do believe that by working together in a spirit of collaboration and keeping up the dialogue that we can develop the tangible outputs that we need over the coming months,” he said. Cox singled out for praise the work that had been done at the GLF around developing a common framework for delivering the decarbonisation of infrastructure. “The continuing work on a carbon collaboration programme and framework, which began as a result of our very first Global Leadership Summit, is excellent and it’s great to see the progress being made on this crucial issue,” Cox said.
FIDIC president Catherine Karakatsanis also picked up on the theme of change that was a key feature of this year’s summit. “Change was a constant feature of our discussions at this summit. Nowhere is this more clearly seen as in the fast-moving area of digital and technology, with the rise of AI, which has real potential to transform the way we do business and our working practices and methods into the future,” she said.
Highlighting the progress that the Global Leadership Forum had taken over the past year, FIDIC’s president said that new members had joined the GLF from previously underrepresented regions giving it a more even geographic spread. “Interest, in particular, is coming from larger ‘national’ firms who do not have global reach, but who benefit from networking with similar-sized organisations and larger global firms,” said Karakatsanis.
The summit also included a keynote address from Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam (pictured above), 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 a fascinating and informative address Van-Tam explored how, in a global crisis, actions were achieved at a pace previously unimaginable. The insights and experiences he shared with the infrastructure leaders present offered some 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.
Summing up the event, Karakatsanis said: “The GLF is all about leadership and providing a space for infrastructure leaders to discuss the key issues and challenges we face and to develop plans and strategies to solve them. This third summit has given us an excellent basis to make further progress over the next year and FIDIC really appreciates all those who have attended in Madrid and shared their insights and participated so enthusiastically.”
