There were 59 participants at an inaugural meeting during the World Exhibition in Ghent, Belgium, in July 1913, to discuss the possibility of forming a global federation of consulting engineers.
Of the participants, 19 were official delegates from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA, with the remainder coming from Austria/Hungary, Canada, Russia and the UK. The meeting was a success in that it led to FIDIC's formal constitution on 22 July 1913.
