Look­ing back on a suc­cess­ful busi­ness year

At the IBU Gen­er­al Meet­ing on 20 May 2017, IBU Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Dr Burkhart Lehmann pre­sent­ed the 2016 Annu­al Report, there­by offi­cial­ly bring­ing the fis­cal year to a close and offer­ing a pos­i­tive ret­ro­spec­tive on 2016 and the devel­op­ments that took place at the IBU dur­ing the year.

Fis­cal year 2016 was char­ac­terised by the con­tin­u­ing growth of IBU mem­ber­ship. A total of 23 new mem­bers joined the IBU, con­sist­ing of sev­en­teen com­pa­nies and six asso­ci­a­tions. This con­sti­tutes an 11 % increase in mem­ber­ship, with 193 full mem­bers. IBU’s stand­ing as an inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tion was also solid­i­fied: For the first time, the major­i­ty of the new­com­ers – twelve new mem­bers – came from coun­tries oth­er than Ger­many. As of 31 Decem­ber 2016, the IBU had pub­lished 1,414 EPDs.

Impor­tant areas of activ­i­ty in 2016 includ­ed pub­lic rela­tions work as well as pro­vid­ing sup­port to mem­bers in the cre­ation of EPDs. This was achieved in part by the cre­ation of a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­u­al, with a relat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions work­shop in Cologne at the begin­ning of the year, and also in part by a spe­cial IBU edi­tion of green­BUILD­ING for BAU 2017 on the top­ic of EPDS, which involved the inten­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion of IBU members.

Dr Lehmann pre­sent­ed addi­tion­al IBU high­lights of 2016, includ­ing the relaunch of the IBU web­site and the first-ever IBU Mem­bers Day, along with the part­ner­ship with the Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award in the area of the Spe­cial Prize for Resource Effi­cien­cy and the deci­sive sup­port of the ECO Plat­form at the inter­na­tion­al event ‘EPD and ECO Plat­form – a suc­cess­ful sto­ry’ in Octo­ber 2016 in Brussels.

With the revised 2016 ver­sion of the PCR Part A and the prepa­ra­tion of a fee struc­ture reform, which took effect on 1 Jan­u­ary 2017, two addi­tion­al build­ing blocks for the con­tin­u­ing suc­cess of the EPD pro­gramme and the IBU were laid.

A dig­i­tal copy of the Annu­al Report will be sent to IBU mem­bers along with the min­utes of the Gen­er­al Meeting.