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In October 2001 a proposal was made to PIANC ExCom to set up a Task Group of young professionals. This proposal was made in response to the following concerns :

• The average age of PIANC members is high.
  
  
• In some countries, PIANC is suffering from a "generation gap".
  
  
• It is increasingly difficult to convince today's middle and upper management of the value of corporate membership of PIANC.
  
  
• Both corporate members and individual members are important to PIANC.
  
  
• Today's students and young professionals are tomorrow's middle and upper management.
  
  
• In order to attract tomorrow's corporate members, PIANC needs to attract students and young professionals into the Association, to nurture them, and encourage them to become the "champions" of PIANC.
  
  
• PIANC therefore needs young members to survive.

The Young Professionals Task Group objectives (approved by ExCom, 9 October 2001) were :

1. To establish the needs of Young Professionals and the extent to which PIANC currently meets those needs
   
   
2. To identify ways in which it might be possible to change or add to the support and/or services which PIANC provides, and
   
   
3. To establish routes by which young members can more effectively contribute to the day-to-day activities and future development of PIANC

A report of the Task Group findings and recommendations was presented at the AGA in Bergen in May 2003, where it was agreed that a Young Professionals Implementation Group (YPIG) should be set up to prioritise actions and to assist in putting them into practice. The Implementation Group comprised Young Professionals and several mentors from the wider PIANC membership to assist in implementation.

The recommendations for the way forward are presented in this report.