 Engineering societies and associations are uniquely positioned to advance the SDGs. The first part of this session will introduce how key organizations and institutions are playing a role in the 2030 agenda, contributing to sustainability broadly and envisioning the future. I'm pleased to introduce you to our co-architect for the session, Mark Abbott. Mark is the managing director of the Engineering Change Lab Canada, which is a catalyst for evolving the engineering community to reach its full potential of stewards of technology for the benefit of all. Previously, Mark served as a member of the executive team at Engineers Without Borders Canada for several years. And before that, Mark spent 14 years working for a heavy industrial consulting engineering firm based in Vancouver. Thank you for joining us from British Columbia today, Mark, over to you. Thanks, Yana. Welcome, everyone. My name's Mark Abbott. I'm, as Yana said, the managing director of the Engineering Change Lab here in Canada. The Engineering Change Lab is a collaborative platform that brings together leaders from across the engineering community to help understand and unlock the full potential of engineering to contribute to society. So it was my pleasure to be asked to moderate today's panel. And we'll be considering, as Yana said, the opportunity for engineering societies to help drive sustainable development. And we already heard a lot in the opening session about the SDGs and their importance and the importance in particular of the contributions of engineering and technology. But just as a quick reminder, the 17 sustainable development goals frame an urgent call for action by all countries to work together in global partnership. The SDGs are the latest in an arc of multinational efforts. They build on the Rio plus 20 conference where member states discussed the future we want. Since helping build the future we want sounds like a good way of summarizing the ultimate goal of the engineering profession. And since the SDGs represent the broadest and most legitimate international consensus on what that future needs to look like, we thought now would be a great time to do a bit of benchmarking regarding how key organizations are currently contributing to sustainability broadly and the SDGs specifically. With the help of several Eclipse interns from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, we developed an initial list of benchmarking questions that we used to engage several engineering societies in a first round of exploration. We see this as early experimentation around what an ongoing process for benchmarking could look like. Today we're excited to bring you into this conversation by having a discussion with three of the leading engineering societies that we've engaged in the exercise thus far. We have amazing panelists representing the American Society of Mechanical Engineers or ASME, the American Society of Civil Engineers or ASCE, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers or IEEE. I will provide a brief intro to each of our panelists before I ask them their first question. Once again, we aren't gonna have time for a direct Q and A in this panel. However, if you type your comments and questions for the panelists into the chat, we will share them with the panelists afterwards, get their responses and incorporate them into the final synthesis document for the conference. So without further ado, let's get to the panelists. We're going to hear from them in two main rounds of conversation. The first looking at the current state of their engineering society's contribution to sustainable development and the second looking ahead to the future. Our first panelist is Bill Kelly, who is representing the American Society of Civil Engineers. Bill currently chairs the ASCE Working Group for Global Sustainability and he has taught sustainability at George Mason University. Just this fall, he was recognized for his work on advancing the UN SDGs with an ASCE Distinguished Service Medal. Bill, I know that ASCE has been formally committed to sustainable development since the mid-90s when sustainability was first explicitly incorporated into your Code of Ethics. And I also know that ASCE has a formal policy explicitly endorsing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. With this long history of contribution, can you give an overview of how ASCE views the potential of engineers to contribute to sustainable development and what ASCE is currently doing to support this contribution? Happy to do that, Mark. Want to mention first that the ASCE Code of Ethics was actually updated this fall and sustainability is even more prominent in the new version than it was in the old version. And one of the fundamental principles being that engineers create safe, resilient and sustainable infrastructure. And then with a responsibility that includes adherence to the principles of sustainable development. It also calls again for zero tolerance for bribery and corruption and that aligns very nicely with UN SDG 16. And the reality is in many parts of the world, corruption and bribery are the biggest barriers to sustainable infrastructure. I want to talk about four actions that ASCE is taking right now and I'll start with policy 418. You mentioned the policy on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The policy 418 is the role of civil engineers in sustainable development. And it briefly says that civil engineers shall be committed to the following ASCE principles of sustainable development. The first is to do the right project. And this means that engineers need to be involved much earlier in the project development phase than they have in the past. And then the second is to do the project right. And this policy has actually been around since 1993. So we're coming up on 30 years where ASCE has been doing it. Mark, you mentioned the 1992 conference. The second one is the ASCE five year roadmap to sustainable development. And there are four pillars. The first pillar is to do the right project, which I mentioned just briefly as one of the principles. And the second is to do the project right. And where ASCE is right now is with a new standard the standard requirements for sustainable infrastructure. And this is going to be a true engineering standard. This is being developed in the ANSI process. And I know ASME is very knowledgeable on standards development. It's expected to be ready finally in 2021. One of the challenges with the standards procedures is it's a long-term process. The third pillar of the roadmap or third signpost if you want is to build capacity. And this starts obviously with formal education that you mentioned earlier in the introduction and then continuing education, lifelong learning, making sure the practitioners have the tools. And the tools are evolving rapidly. I looked to just read this week there's like 50 sustainable infrastructure tools that are out there. The book that I had the privilege of co-editing has a general discussion of sustainability also has an introduction to the sustainable development goals. And then ASCE has done a series of webinars one directed specifically as students and one of practitioners on the sustainable development goals how ASCE members can get involved. The fourth pillar is we need to transform the profession. We need to have just as we're hearing today engineers think when they're gonna do something think how does it fit with the framework of the SDGs? And then we need to make sure in our case that the public demands infrastructure that's sustainable and resilient. If the public doesn't demand it we're not gonna be able to make it happen. If the public demands it we're gonna be forced to make it happen. The third pillar is the international conferences on sustainable infrastructure that are practice oriented conferences and they run every two years the next one will be in 2021. And the final pillar is the industry led international coalition for sustainable infrastructure that you mentioned earlier. This is a new activity came out of the 2019 XE conference in LA. So Mark, with that I'll turn it back to you. Great, thanks Bill. It's great to hear that update and overview on ASCE's efforts. And I really love the, you know it's not just about doing the project right but doing the right project and this idea of kind of advocating more with the general public I think really speak to this an expanded view of the contribution of engineers. Next we have Michael Johnson who is the chief strategy officer at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Michael from our pre-research and conversation I know that ASME has also been for over a decade directly involved and contributing towards sustainable development and the UN SDGs more explicitly including launching and supporting helping launch and support engineering for change the organization that puts on this conference. So the same question to you with your organization's long history of effort in this area can you give us an overview of how ASME views the potential of engineers to contribute and what you're currently doing to support this contribution? Well, thanks Mark and thank you for having me. We, yes, as you mentioned we have been engaged in this for several years. We support a number of the SDGs through the activities. We just fundamentally believe that the engineering and particularly the mechanical engineering community has the capability to really deliver on making substantive change to our planet and what we're particularly doing. I've been here about a year and when I came in to think about our strategy we really refocused our strategy overall of ASME to really focus on the global challenges we've identified about six or seven things that we really thought we could devote and really channel our energy of the resources we have and to these seven goals which are sustainable solutions, clean energy, efficient housing, clean water, efficient transportation, public safety and healthy healthcare. So we've evolved from primarily the work we historically have done has been done by our philanthropic and our engineering global development sector but we've uplifted that work to really have the whole organizations focused around these global aspirations and we're trying to make sure that everything we do makes a contribution to that and one of the challenges that we have one of the challenges that we're trying to address is how do we take our 100,000 membership, use that collective knowledge and that collective skill set to drive some of the fundamental changes that we need to have in society. Excellent, thanks Michael. That's super inspiring to hear sort of this refocus on global or deepening focus on global challenges and the sort of sophistication of finding those six or seven specific areas where you feel like you have the greatest impact and the idea of the sort of expansion from thinking of it as sort of on the philanthropic side to like uplifting the whole organization I think is very inspiring. To complete our first round, we have Kathy Land who is the president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Kathy, although I'm a mechanical engineer I'm also an IEEE member. I was attracted by the amazing work IEEE is doing with your ethically aligned design initiative but I've also come to appreciate just how vast IEEE's efforts are on a wide range of efforts to connect engineering to purpose. With everything that the IEEE is doing can you give us an overview of how you see sustainable development and how you are integrating it into your overall efforts? Yes, well, thank you, Mark and thank you for your IEEE membership. Appreciate that. So innovative implementation of existing and emerging technologies is one of the essentials of achieving sustainable development worldwide. The SDGs are all-encompassing and IEEE recognizes that it will have its greatest impact in the areas where SDGs align with IEEE's core competencies. IEEE members around the globe are continuously exploring and applying technology to help solve the world's mischallenging problems. And it's that universal passion to use technology to improve global conditions which is really at the heart of IEEE's significant humanitarian activities and our expanding partnerships in the realm of sustainable development. There's a lot of excitement around information and communications technologies or ICTs and other innovations as valuable tools for achieving so many of the UN SDGs including offsetting poverty and hunger and promoting clean water and sanitation, climate action, affordable and clean energy, human well-being, economic growth and responsible consumption and production, for example. With more than 419,000 members in over 160 countries, IEEE is a leading authority in ICTs and virtually every other technology area in touching sustainable development such as smart cities, transportation and all aspects of power and energy from generation to efficient consumption. In recent years, IEEE has placed greater emphasis on human technical activities in humanitarian technical activities. IEEE works across multiple fronts to advance sustainable development and ensure that we are succeeding in our mission to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. For example, the IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee or HAC was launched in 2016 as a committee of the IEEE reporting directly to the Board of Directors. HAC provides a suite of resources that inspire and enable IEEE volunteers around the world to carry out and support impactful humanitarian technology and sustainable development activities at the local level. HAC focuses on raising awareness of how technically trained people can contribute by providing training for engagement in humanitarian technology and sustainable development activities, financially and technically supporting and evaluating projects, cultivating relationships and opportunities so that IEEE can become a leader in global sustainable development community. The IEEE Smart Village is another IEEE initiative that encourages development in energy and poverty communities around the world. Smart Village provides technical and financial support to local entrepreneurs who expand both energy access and education in remote communities. The program combines the talents of empowered beneficiaries with IEEE volunteers, but playing an active role in doing hands-on work in local communities. The work that Smart Village is doing around the world is really impressive. There's another activity, the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. And that's the project you mentioned, Mark. This works to ensure that every stakeholder involved in the design and development of autonomous and intelligent systems is educated, trained and empowered to prioritize the ethical considerations so that these technologies are advanced for the benefit of community. And then the IEEE P7000 series of standards, projects that are under development, represents a unique addition to the collection of over 1,900 global IEEE standards and projects. Whereas the more traditional standards have a focus on technology, interoperability, functionality, safety and trade facilitation, the IEEE P7000 series addresses specific issues at the intersection of technological and ethical considerations, like its technical standards, counterparts that IEEE P7000 series empowers innovation across borders and enables societal benefit. We're pretty busy in this area. And there's a lot going on in IEEE, thanks. Wow, yeah, a lot going on to say the least. And I'm really loving this theme. I'm hearing from all of you of sort of looking at sustainable development and the SDGs and also putting that up against sort of the unique opportunities for your particular societies to contribute. And Kathy, I loved what you said about, with the long history of IEEE's strength and technical standards, this move towards integrating the ethical standards and the technical standards, I think is really exciting. So moving into our next round where we wanna now look ahead a little bit, Bill, you mentioned in your first response that IEEE recently strengthened sustainability in your code of ethics. And I know you're already doing a lot. So I'm curious about how you envision ramping up your efforts in alignment with the stronger commitment. So going forward, what do you see as the next opportunities and barriers for IEEE specifically and for engineering more broadly to contribute to sustainable development? Mark, I think the immediate opportunity for IEEE is really to build on the standard that I mentioned earlier, the standard requirements for sustainable infrastructure. There's a real need for this nationally and internationally. And that's gonna be a heavy lift to make sure that that gets out on the appropriate support. The second area is really collaboration or as Yana pointed out and several have said earlier on, it's partnerships and ASC collaborates with the other civil engineering societies, the Institute of Civil Engineers in the UK, the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers. And as I mentioned earlier, the Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council, which is about 20 civil engineering societies. We also work very closely with the World Federation of Engineering Organizations. And WFEO and the institutes, the International Science Council co-organize the major group on science and technology at the UN. It's important then also to work with the UN agencies. EcoSoc has been on UNOPS and UNEP. And UNOPS and UNEP are actually doing important work on sustainable infrastructure. I organized a seminar a week or two ago with my Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council on planning and we had Rowan Palmer from UNEP talk on planning. And then it's important that we make the stronger connection with industry. And I mentioned the International Science, International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure. I also believe for the UN that there's a special opportunity this year, the president of EcoSoc, who's kind of sets the agenda for the high level political forum. He's identified three priorities. The first one is finance. The second one is sustainable infrastructure. And the third is science, technology and innovation. And he's looking for very specific things that could be done to accelerate progress over the next decade. And then I think we need to renew our efforts to make sure that all our civil engineering graduates have the knowledge they need on the sustainable development goals. For engineering more broadly, I think collaboration is the key partnerships. We've got to tear down some silos and work together. I think we can have an enormous impact on engineering education more broadly. It's not just the civil engineers that need to know about the STGs. All engineers need to know about the STGs. And then unfortunately today, we lack a formal or even an informal way of sharing best practice among the engineering societies and the other engineering organizations like engineers without borders. If we're gonna make an impact nationally and internationally on the STGs, we need to work together. Otherwise the voice of engineering is kind of lost in the crowd. I can tell you that very true at the UN. I think if we can find some ways to work together and I give engineering for change a lot of credit for what they're trying to do here, if they can change the way we're collaborating, I think the engineering community can really have an impact on the STGs. So I'll turn it back to you, Mark. Thanks, Bill. I love that focus on collaboration with NASE and hearing it from ASME and IEEE as well too. Obviously very well aligned with the STGs and in particular Goal 17, which is all about a collaboration around the goals. Michael, over to you and your first response, you spoke about that potential to connect the 100,000 ASME members even more to this work and thread it through everything that you're doing. Going forward, what do you see as next opportunities and barriers for ASME specifically and engineering more broadly in this front? I really just wanna amplify a little bit what Bill said. I think that we've gotta do a much better job of collaboration, we've gotta figure out how IEEE, the civils, the mechanical engineers, and particularly as engineering is changing, particularly relative to becoming a much more multidisciplinary activity that we come together in some kind of form, which is one of these that we're trying to be here today and really start to drive collaboration across all our societies. And so I think that's a huge opportunity for us that we've gotta take a little bit more advantage of. Specifically related to ASME, we will continue to do and expand our innovation showcase, our eyes show that gives young entrepreneurs, college entrepreneurs an opportunity to do some hardware, software development activities in social spaces. So we'll continue to force sponsor that. We'll continue to sponsor our fellowship programs and expand our fellowship programs to make sure that we're building a talent pool going forward relative to this. And probably most importantly, as somebody recently, we formed a for-profit arm of ASME. And the whole design there is to generate alternative revenue streams that we can use to fund some of the philanthropic work that we're currently doing. The reality is that whether we like it or not, these programs require enormous sums of money. We've gotta figure out how we can make a bigger investment here. And so one of our strategic pillars is to drive some commercial business so that we can fund more of this work activity going forward. And then I think relative to engaging our engineering community, as I said, we've just now established a strategy. We're trying to drive that strategic direction down through the organization, working through our technology sector. And so I think as time evolves, we'll see more and more of that 100,000 group of people being focused on social development. Excellent, thanks, Michael. Yeah, again, continue on this theme of collaboration and the work and efforts can be required to put it into to make sure that we are collaborating across different organizations. And then I think that recognition of the financing needs to make our efforts on sustainability financially sustainable as well, I think is an excellent point. Kathy, you gave a great overview in your first response on the many efforts IEEE already has underway. And I know there's just so much going on within IEEE. Within all of that, what are you seeing as the next opportunities and barriers for IEEE going forward? Thanks, yep. So IEEE has a call to action to its communities to develop professional and educational programs supporting capacity building for engineering and technical professionals in parts of the world where resources are scanned. We see it as an issue of capacity. Many IEEE programs are focused on building partnerships with local communities and stakeholder groups to encourage the adaption and implementation of appropriate technology to increase community capacity building to support local sustainability. Our efforts are focused on strengthening the capacity and impact of IEEE volunteers involved in sustainable development activities by raising awareness of how technologists and scientists and engineers can contribute, facilitating different levels of education and training, providing funding for projects and events across the globe, supporting multi-stakeholder collaboration through IEEE activities and building strategic partnerships to better leverage opportunities. In addition, IEEE recently received consultive status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council or ECOSOC and the special status is granted to non-governmental organizations or NGOs which have special competence and are concerned specifically with some fields of activity covered by ECOSOC. So this approval recognizes IEEE's contribution to date to sustainable development and humanitarian technology and to supporting the achievement of the UN SDGs. So this status enables IEEE to more closely participate in the work of the United Nations and to attend international conferences and events, make written and oral statements of these events and organize side events, enter the UN premises and have opportunities to network and lobby. So this will also allow IEEE to strategically significant help us increase our impact and contributions going forward. That's something that we felt like we've been limited in somewhat. So IEEE is also engaged with the International Telecommunication Union or ITU which is the United Nations Agency for Digital Technology. So we're just trying to increase our inroads. As for barriers, it's true that new environmental, ethical and equity related challenges are being introduced by some of our world's most promising transformative technologies that threaten to undermine trust and hinder advances in sustainable development. ICTs, for example, make contribute to increased levels of emissions in terms of their production, energy consumption and associated electronic waste. They also raise new requirements around the issues of systemic risk, diminished trust, privacy challenges and issues of data transparency, ownership and agency. So developers and operators of ICTs must maintain awareness and employ consensus-based technical practices and standards recognizing and aligning with end users and citizens' values. So those are some issues. So we're working to create a plan to develop IEEE's future engagement in creating and supporting technical solutions, particularly in areas of sustainable energy and ICT. There's a need for the development of alternative and prospective energy system architectures, technologies and case studies that demonstrate the potential for new approaches to power and energy that can help try the path toward net zero greenhouse gas futures. As for sustainable ICT, we recognize the need for advancing human-centric, secure, trusted and ethically-oriented ICT that will enhance and sustain human society over the long term. Across our organization and our membership, the IEEE Code of Ethics encourages our members to strive and comply with ethical design and sustainable practices. And with a recent push to make sure that our members, an increased member awareness of our Code of Ethics, and this is crucial given the global scale of the environmental, social and governance challenges that threaten to influence the living conditions for our current generations. So these are just a few. Thanks. Thanks, Kathy. That's amazing. I really love what you're saying about sort of recognizing not just the potential of engineering and technology but also some of the risks that we need to mitigate against. And this idea of consensus-based approaches where engineers are collaborating broadly in society to understand and mitigate those risks, I think speaks really well to, it's not just about the goals, it's about how we progress towards those goals too that's very inspiring. So in the short amount of time, it was great to hear from each of you a little bit about where you're at and looking ahead. We heard about a wide range of sort of activities and all three organizations from codes of ethics to standards, capacity building, providing resources, advocacy, collaborating and setting up collaborative platforms. How do we finance all of this work and more? So it's truly inspiring just to see the scope of engagement that's already happening on all of this work. So I'd like to thank all of our panelists for the insights they shared with us today. And as I mentioned in the introduction and as came up in the discussion, we view today's conversation and the lead up to it as early steps in an ongoing effort to enhance benchmarking and sharing best practices and collaborating across the engineering societies and beyond so that we can continue to enhance engineering's contribution to achieving sustainable development. So this idea of in the lead up to this session of testing some benchmarking questions and having deeper conversations to sort of cross check and learn across organizations is something that we're really hoping to continue to continue. If you have suggestions or are interested in getting involved we invite you to follow up through the engineering society you're currently affiliated with. If you're not affiliated with one or multiple I encourage you to check out their websites and consider membership as I have with ASME and IEEE and I need to look at ASCE now next and or to reach out to engineering for change as well. So with that, I'd like to thank again our panelists and wish everyone enjoyment for the rest of the conference. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you, Mark, Kathy, Michael and Bill for your incredible insights. Really excited to digest all of those nuggets.