Members of the Institution of Civil Engineers can now apply for the Kenneth Watson Travel Award and the Queen’s Jubilee Scholarship Trust (Quest) Travel Award to fund overseas study of infrastructure and engineering practice. Both schemes support early-career and mid-career engineers to investigate specific technical themes abroad, such as major bridge projects, geotechnical innovations or climate-resilient flood defences, and bring findings back to UK practice. Applicants must propose a structured travel plan with clear learning objectives and dissemination routes, making these grants useful for targeted technical upskilling rather than general travel.

Publication of New Zealand’s 30‑year infrastructure strategy draws directly on the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) programme, which promotes outcome‑based planning, whole‑life cost analysis and resilience to climate risks. The plan uses EBI’s structured decision‑making framework to prioritise transport, water and energy investments, embedding asset management over multiple renewal cycles rather than single‑project funding. For practitioners, this signals growing international convergence on common planning tools and metrics, easing benchmarking of service levels, risk appetite and long‑term performance across jurisdictions.

The Treasury’s updated Green Book, issued in February, overhauls appraisal guidance for UK infrastructure by moving beyond narrow benefit–cost ratios and gross value added to include distributional impacts, place-based outcomes and long‑term resilience. New requirements to quantify social value, net‑zero alignment and climate adaptation are expected to change how options are sifted and how business cases are structured for major schemes such as rail upgrades, flood defences and urban regeneration. For engineers, this signals closer scrutiny of whole‑life carbon, asset performance under future climate scenarios and benefits to left‑behind regions.