History

The Institute for Sustainable Construction (ICS) is the result of the merger of IC – Instituto da Construção, LEMC – Laboratório de Ensaio de Materiais de Construção and IHRH – Instituto de Hidráulica e Recursos Hídricos.

This change aims to better satisfy and meet the needs of organizations and all those who contact us, intending to provide an increasingly appropriate response to their requests, by combining the competencies of the three previous institutes into the new Institute for Sustainable Construction – ICS, to reach new levels of excellence in the provision of our services and constantly building a vision of the future.

For this reason, the ICS aims to develop scientific and technological activities in the area of Civil Engineering, particularly in the fields of Civil Construction; Structures; Geotechnics; Hydraulics, Water Resources, and Environment; Mathematics and Numerical Methods in Engineering; Construction Materials; Territorial Planning and, Environment; Roads and Transport, and in related areas, both of a fundamental nature and a more applied scope, thus enabling the potentialisation in the new ICS of the strengths of each of the three previous Institutes.

The Instituto Construção (IC) is a private, scientific and technical non-profit association established in 1989 at the Faculdade de Engenharia at the Universidade do Porto (FEUP), which aims to develop activities that are divided into the following main areas:

Applied scientific research and technological development;
Technology transfer;
Expert advice and independent audits;
Service provision;
Advanced training;

Organized to support the Construction industry, the IC establishes direct links between academia, industry, public administration, and society, thus enabling FEUP’s highly qualified DEC faculty and researchers to contribute to a significant improvement in the construction sector.

The main building is located on the FEUP Campus and it includes DEC faculty members, as well as contracted researchers, scholarship holders, and administrative staff.