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MEETING CHALLENGE – THE WAY AHEAD
t
he way ahead for IIW, really, is to look at the accomplish-
ments of welding over recent times including the way that welding has transformed
the lives of everyone and the promise of a bright future that it will inevitably bring.
Infrastructure is one of the key aspects of a nation’s development since investment in
infrastructure has a multiplier effect in generating lasting economic and environmental
benefits. Investment in water, sanitation, energy, housing and transport also improves
lives and reduces poverty. Insufficient or inadequate infrastructure can lead to congestion,
power outages, lack of access to safe water and roads, inadequate or non-existent health
facilities and is a global concern, particularly in underdeveloped and developing countries.
Just keeping pace with projected global GDP growth will require an estimated USD 57
trillion in infrastructure investment between 2013 and 2030, 60% more than it cost over
the previous 18 years.¹ The inevitable risk is that the difference between rich and poor will
become greater, leading to dislocation in socioeconomic relationships and mass relocation
from the poorer countries to richer nations for those who are seeking a better quality of life.
In meeting that challenge it has been necessary for welding, in its entirety, to be innovative
in accomplishing the great advances that have taken place over the last 25 years.
Infrastructure, inherently, has always been the key to sustainable
development as evidenced by the great industrial revolution in the 1800s,
which led to more cost-effective methods of production and a need for
improved transportation to facilitate the movement of goods and materials
by land and sea. Welding, associated with advances in materials, was used in
the great infrastructure projects of the twentieth century – dams, buildings,
bridges, ports, shipping, power stations, and air and road projects.
Welding played an unrivalled role in the development of many of the great industrial
nations although welding technology, itself, is often an unnoticed and invisible activity
pervading a nation’s industrial development. Half the economic wealth of industrialised
nations relies directly or indirectly on fabrication techniques using welding and joining
technologies. The health of nations is equally important and welding itself has also been
instrumental in improving the lifestyle of the overall population with advances in welding
techniques for different biocompatible materials in medical devices, such as miniature
cardiac pacemakers and surgical implants. It is in this area of microjoining technology that
some of the greatest advances in the welding and joining of materials has taken place over
the last 25 years.