ENR's Editor-in-Chief Janice Tuchman recently interviewed one of the industry's visionaries, Chris Luebkeman, director of the foresight and innovation group at Arup Group Ltd., a leading international engineering consultant based in London but with offices around the world. Arup engineers became convinced of the global threat of human-motivated climate change because its environmental physics team did a detailed review of the science and its validity. They say climate change will potentially affect everything the firm does. In a "drivers of change" project, Luebkeman embarked on 30 months of global workshops involving thousands of people in and out of the firm. One result was a boxed card set giving facts and figures on social, technical and economic issues. Arup has sold thousands of the sets in 15 countries for about $40 each. (They are available at www.driversofchange.com).

The cards ask, "What will our world be like in 2050?" They then identify some of the leading drivers of change that affect our future. In the environment set: "How long will we continue to flush our toilets with drinking water? When will building have to generate the energy they need?" In the economy group: "How long can our debt burden be serviced?" Political: "When will learning Mandarin or Hindi be compulsory?" And social: "Who controls your free time? You or your TV?"

Dr Chris H Luebkeman
Director for Global Foresight & Innovation, Arup Group, London

Chris Luebkeman hates to be categorized. He sees himself in the spaces between professions. As director for global foresight and innovation at Ove Arup & Partners, London, he as specialized in being a generalist "in league with the future." He currently is spending most of his time and energy building a better understanding of the way in which the driving forces of change should be incorporated into a more effective business strategy. As an educator, he has taught in the departments of architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the University of Oregon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a researcher, he initiated a research program at MIT called "house_n; MIT's intelligent home of the future" —a technological and tectonic exploration of integrating the digital with the physical. His engineering practice involved conceptual design with artists and architects as well as tensegral, mobile and deployable structures. His education includes degrees in geology, structural engineering and architecture.