The 17th World Congress on Municipal Engineering is to be held in Helsinki, Finland, - Tallinn, Estonia and Stockholm, Sweden from 4th to 7th June 2012 with the theme of Sustainable Communities - Plan, Design, Construct and Maintain …for a better future.

The inaugural meeting of IFME (International Federation of Municipal Engineering) took place in the Unesco headquarters in Paris in 1960 and since then membership of IFME has steadily increased and currently includes Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia), Sweden and the UK, with Belgium, San Marino, Denmark and USA as Corresponding Members. Discussions are ongoing with the Iceland, Russia, the Republic of Korea and Slovakia regarding their possible membership.

One of the main objectives of IFME is the spreading of best practice by disemination of information and knowledge outside traditional national boundaries, and its Triennial Congresses afford an ideal opportunity for achieving this aim. The 2012 Congress will be the first to be held in a Northern Hemisphere country since 2000 when it took place in Maastricht in the Netherlands, and since then Congresses have been held in Cape Town, South Africa and more recently in Melbourne, Australia.

The 2012 Congress will, of course, set new horizons by being the first to involve three countries – Finland, Estonia and Sweden, and this will indeed reflect one of IFME`s stated aims of connecting countries and sharing knowledge.

One of the principal global issues currently facing the Municipal Engineering profession has been identified by IFME as that of sustainable management and provision of infrastructure, and this was reflected in the theme for the 2009 Congress in Melbourne – “Global Challenges, local solutions - Delivering for the next generation”. The theme chosen for the 2012 Congress of “Sustainable Communities – Plan, Design, Construct and Maintain …for a better future” follows on perfectly from the previous theme and is a recognition of one of the principal challenges currently facing Municipal Engineers, whichever country they operate in.