The First Meeting in 2023 of International Consultative Committee (ICC) of the Chinese Society of Engineers (CSE) took place at China Hall of Science and Technology on May 26. WU Qidi, Director of the International Centre for Engineering Education under the auspices of UNESCO (ICEE), and LUO Hui, Vice Chairperson of the CSE and Joint Secretary General of CSE Secretariat, attended the meeting and gave opening remarks respectively. GONG Ke, Chair of the ICC and Immediate Past President of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), presided over the meeting. 16 members of the ICC from Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and Africa were present at the meeting online or offline. WANG Sunyu, Deputy Executive Director and Secretary General of ICEE, QIAO Weifeng, Associate Professor of Research of ICEE, XU Lihui, Assistant to Secretary General, and postdoctoral fellow WANG Yujia were invited to attend the meeting.

In her remarks, WU Qidi expressed her gratitude to the old friends among the committee members attending the meeting for their support to ICEE and their assistance to the development of engineering education in China. She hoped to jointly promote comprehensive and balanced development of engineering education around the world with global engineering science and technology organizations, striving to make greater contributions to global sustainable development.

LUO Hui stated that CSE would strengthen its exchanges with the international engineering community and promote international mutual recognition of engineers qualifications, to better implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She hoped that ICC could play a significant consultative role in CSE’s future work.

Then the meeting proceeded with work reports. ZHANG Bin, Deputy Secretary General of CSE, introduced CSE’s engineering capacity building and international exchanges. As members of CSE Engineers Multilateral Agreement Research Group, ICEE members presented the progress of CSE’s application to join the International Engineering Alliance (IEA) Multilateral Agreement. Commissioned by China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), ICEE conducted consultative researches on CSE engineers multilateral agreement. From a third-party perspective, WANG Sunyu and QIAO Weifeng analyzed the basic conclusions of the feasibility study on joining the multilateral agreement and made suggestions on the following work. They suggested the application should be made in due course, more attention should be paid to the sustainable and digital transformation of engineering education, the transitions from the graduate attributes to professional competencies should be enhanced in evaluation, and more focus should be placed on continuing professional development and high-quality lifelong learning among engineers.

Based on the work reports, ICC members made their suggestions on topics about Chinese engineers capacity building and professionalism and internationalization of engineers. It is agreed that China has the largest number of engineers and the largest scale of engineering practice in the world, and Chinese engineers should strengthen cooperation and exchange with engineers from all over the world to deal with common challenges posed by climate change and natural disasters, contributing wisdom from the engineering community to the realization of SDGs.

In his concluding remarks, GONG Ke expressed his gratitude to the committee members for their insightful comments, and suggested CSE should study thoroughly the recommendations and translate them into practice in light of China’s contexts. He also expressed his hope that all engineering organizations can work together to promote sustainable development through engineering.

Relevant experts from the Department of International Affairs of CAST, the CSE Secretariat, and CSE Engineers Multilateral Agreement Research Group attended the meeting. The ICC of CSE consists of 21 influential international engineering experts in education and business who are from significant international engineering organizations and major member organizations of engineering multilateral agreements.