The importance of national groups of international associations

Some time ago, a colleague asked me about the benefit of national groups of international associations. Within IABSE, for example, we recently restarted the Ecuadorean group. ACI and ASCE also have their national groups in the country.

Here’s what I replied: national groups are necessary to form a critical mass, an advocacy group, for our profession within the country. This advocacy goes two ways:

• Education: advocate for the prestige of our profession by motivating young people to study structural engineering, to specialize in the topic, to practice the profession, and to learn more about the variety if applications through lectures organized by the national group.
• Professional advocacy: advocate for the value of structural engineers within the construction sector, both in terms of necessity in the design and construction process, fair remuneration for professional services, and overall prestige of the profession.

What do you think? How do you see the role of national groups?