CIB is the acronym of the abbreviated French (former) name: "Conseil International du Bâtiment" (in English this is: International Council for Building). In the course of 1998, the abbreviation has been kept but the full name changed into:
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION
CIB was established in 1953 as an Association whose objectives were to stimulate and facilitate international cooperation and information exchange between governmental research institutes in the building and construction sector, with an emphasis on those institutes engaged in technical fields of research.
CIB has since developed into a world wide network of over 5.000 experts from about 500 member organisations with a research, university, industry or government background, who collectively are active in all aspects of research and innovation for building and construction.
CIB Past and Present
CIB was established in 1953 with the support of the United Nations, as an association whose objectives were to stimulate and facilitate international collaboration and information exchange between governmental research institutes in the building and construction sector. At that time an implicit objective also was to help rebuild the European infrastructure for building and construction research following the ravages of the second World War.
At the start 43 research institutes were members of CIB and by far the majority of these were European. And just as in the programmes of these institutes at that time, so in the CIB programme there was a strong emphasis on technical topics.
For selected topics CIB Commissions were established to which member organisations appointed experts from their staff to participate.
Along with all types of less visible activities, this collective participation resulted in many important international symposia and congresses and in a large number of publications acknowledged as of global standing. Indeed many of these formed the factual basis for developing international standards or were themselves used as such. Others were international state-of-the-art reports that for a long time provided an indispensable input to programming new research by the participating institutes and countries.
However, CIB has come a long way since 1953.
At present about 500 organisations are members of CIB from whom about 5000 individual experts participate in over 50 CIB Commissions. These extend over the whole area of building and construction research and innovation.
Amongst the CIB member organisations we can now find almost all the major national building research institutes in the world, as well as many other types of organisations in the building and construction sector who have joined us since. And although within the CIB programme considerable attention is still given to technical topics, there are now also activities focused on topics like organisation and management, economics of building, legal and procurement practices, architecture, urban planning and human aspects.
It is no exaggeration to say that at present CIB is the world's foremost platform for international cooperation and information exchange in the area of building and construction research and innovation. And we continue to increase our membership, to expand our scope, to initiate new activities while constantly striving to improve the quality of our products and services.
