In 2025 Purdue University will host the 23rd World Building Congress WBC2025 at its campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, from 19-23 May 2025. The CIB President Makarand (Mark) Hastak and his conference co-chair Z Torbica look forward to welcoming all CIB members and other delegates. The latest news is as follows.
Headlines
Host: Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, on campus
Dates: May 19th – 23rd 2025
Conference co-chairs: Professors Mark Hastak (CIB President) and Z Torbica, both Purdue University
Conference title: “Sustainable built environment – the role of the construction community in meeting the UN SDGs”
Format: Mainly face-to-face with some online-only sessions (see below).
Target capacity: 600 pax, 700 max
Registration opens: July 1st 2024
Deadline for submission of full papers: November 18th 2024
Milestones so far
November 2023: Call for abstracts
December 2023: Signed Memorandum of Understanding between CIB and Purdue University
March 2024: Submission and approval of abstracts for scientific papers, 629 received as of March 18th.
Key future dates
2024:
May: nominations for keynote speakers
May: Call for industry case studies
July 1st: Conference registration opens
November 18th: Deadline for submission of full papers. The organisers are open to receiving full papers even if you have not submitted an abstract. All full papers will be subject to blind peer reviews before acceptance.
December 23rd: Notification of acceptance or rejection of papers.
2025:
February 10th: Closing date for ‘early bird’ registration
February 10th: Deadline for ‘camera ready’ papers
May 12th: Conference registration closes
May 19-22: WBC2025
TBC: Publication of WBC2025 conference proceedings
Other progress
Other matters progressed by the Local Organising Committee and discussed with the Scientific Committee (see below) include:
- Indexed Proceedings and Special Issues
- Proceedings are planned to be published as Open Access with Scopus Indexing
- The organisers have met with editors of CIB Recognised and Approved journals to invite expressions of interest in publishing Special Issues based on leading conference papers.
- Proposals for themes, tracks and sessions
- Online sessions are planned that would sandwich the in-person sessions on all days. Online sessions would run from 7:00-9:00 am EST and 5:00-7:00 pm EST on all days while the regular in-person conference sessions would run from 9:00 am-5:00 pm EST daily.
- Conference fees and discounts
- Nominations for keynote speakers and other plenary sessions
- Parallel programmes including Industry discussion panels, workshops, NAC, students/ECR activities including Doctoral School
- Exhibition & Sponsorship
- Social programme (spouses and guests)
- First meeting of the Congress Governance Committee (joint Purdue University/CIB).
Scientific Committee
This has now met seven times to March 2024, with two sessions per meeting in different time zones to maximise attendance. Its next meetings are scheduled for May 9th and June 27th, and further meetings will be arranged later in the year. Applications to join the committee are still welcomed.
All CIB Commission Coordinators were invited to join the SC along with North American members of CIB and representatives of other associations in USA. To date over 100 people from 21 countries have joined the committee and 86 have attended at least one of the meetings to date.
Enquiries
If you have any enquiries abut any aspect of the above update or another aspect of WBC2025, please email CIB President Makarand (Mark) Hastak or his conference co-chair Z. Torbica and they will seek to answer your query. Alternatively you can email CIB chief executive Don Ward.
