Incoming CIBSE President, George Adams, has delivered his first address at the Institute's agm on 9 May, at the Royal Society in London.
At the meeting, Mr Adams was inaugurated as president and the inauguration of the president elect and vice presidents also took place.
With the theme of 'Whole Life Thinking' Mr Adams said that engineers working in the built environment had an urgent responsibility to help reduce energy consumption and provide for the adaptation of buildings and cities, to respond climate change challenges, while accommodating the needs of rapidly growing populations.
The theme of Mr Adams' address builds on retiring president, Professor David Fisk's, call last year for the industry to concentrate on measuring and learning from the performance of real buildings, not on 'greenwash'.
Mr Adams said the event was an opportunity to celebrate CIBSE's successes, while recognising the challenges and potential solutions in relation to the built environment and the industry.
He stressed the need for a new energy engineering conscience and called for the pace of action to improve the industry and reduce its environmental impact to be accelerated through increased efforts to embrace diversity and behavioural change. Encouraging young people to consider engineering as a career was essential, and that engineering in the built environment sector was about creating great buildings for people to work, play and live in.
The President also acknowledged the need to work on new innovations and embrace technology such as BIM. CIBSE and partners have launched BIMTalk, a website to share knowledge across all areas of the industry from HVAC to landscaping.
CIBSE's role going forward is to embrace a campaign for change, and continue to provide a thought leadership role, working with other professional bodies and government, to help enable this change to happen.
Mr Adams summarised the good progress being made by CIBSE, its staff, its regions, the numerous groups and the strengthening membership with the launch of the Diversity Panel, the work of the Young Engineers Network and newly formed Women in Building Services Engineering network.
