PI-UKChina chairman David Hughes and CIOB vice-president Li Shirong gave presentations at the National Conference on Sustainable Development held in Chongqing in September.

Professor Li is the vice-director of foreign trade and economic relations for Chongqing.

The conference was a platform to promote the work of PI-UKChina together with technical presentations from speakers from Denmark and Portugal as well as Cambridge, Reading and London South Bank Universities in the UK.

David and PI-UKChina’s Shanghai project manager Geena Xie took the opportunity to interview four postgraduate Chongqing University students for the role of representing the organisation in Chongqing. This part-time position would be supported by the British Council on a similar basis to that of Shanghai, and would be PI-UK’s second office in China.

David and Geena also met Sarah Deverall, the recently appointed British Council director in Chongqing, who promised support for the student employment and for the 2008 April Mission and PI-UK launch events in China.

The first formal agreement was signed by PI-UKChina chairman David Hughes during his recent trip to Shanghai. This was negotiated between Geena Xie and Shanghai Institution of Engineers (SHIE) vice-chairman Hu Jialun.

SHIE was co-founded by the Association of Science & Technology and the Shanghai Municipal Personnel Bureau in 2004 and targets the engineering-related non-profit professional institutions and societies in Shanghai and East China region, including the built environment and engineering sector.

The agreement undertakes, among other things, that both parties will share knowledge and understanding of built environment and education systems, and jointly organise academic conferences and seminars on topics such as sustainability, design and environment protection.

After the ceremony David gave a technical presentation on chilled beams which was well received with a lively debate.

Source

Building Sustainable Design