Before entering this issue of our journal, I would like to invite you to think with me about the sustainable development of concrete engineering in the world.Through our national delegations, we are part of an international community called fib, a federation that gathers 43 countries with the main purpose to stimulate, produce and disseminate relevant knowledge to the universe of concrete engineering.But what is the meaning of a federation? The word derives from the Latin "foederatio" of "foedus", which means "connection, treaty, alliance". So we can say that the members who form fib are in an alliance. And this represents much more than each and every one of us developing individually. It means mutual development, i.e. that we will be able to accomplish our purpose when we begin to take an interest in the global development of concrete engineering and not only when the knowledge brings benefits to our country of origin.The production of knowledge in our nations is extremely relevant, whether by means of research at universities and in industry, of projects, of works or of local standards. Nevertheless, when we consider such experience and promote its global dissemination, we establish a sustainable and productive cycle, which will greatly contribute to a new phase of development as we collect technical and market data from a number of countries. In this way, territorial boundaries cease to be significant, the frontiers of knowledge are expanded and new perspectives arise.Through their active participation in a committee and/or a working group in fib, members bring valuable information about the technological development of concrete engineering in their local contexts, and this contributes to the opening of new possibilities of application, formation of new markets and, above all, to knowledge generation, mutual collaboration in terms of expertise and a global vision of the potentialities and capabilities of concrete engineering. This contact with experts from different countries enables us to know and incorporate a series of worldwide references, which when accessed can help in the rational use of our resources and in the generation of new content.There is no doubt that each and every nation has its own particular characteristics, for example natural phenomena, which differ from one country to another; ways of financing research; and legislation, and that should always be taken into consideration in the use of concrete. However, this exercise to understand the characteristics of every area is invariably translated into relationships, mainly when we are interested in convergence, to find the points that are common in each country, and in this way we are able to improve ourselves.
