Engineering Management Group
By Lee M. Koska, PE, Senior Project Engineer, Weston & Sampson, Engineering Management Group Chair
As we say goodbye to 2021, I wanted to reflect on the events and challenges of the past year and what we have to look forward to in the coming new year. Although COVID continues to dominate much of day-to-day life, we’ve seen the rapid development and rollout of vaccines, increased testing, and evolution of new variants. Members of our industry (and of BSCES!) have been instrumental in developing field hospitals, testing sites, wastewater testing and monitoring, and are finding numerous ways to put our skills to use in the continuing fight.
Additionally, this year saw the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This bill is of great public importance and benefit and is expected to have wide ranging implications for the civil engineering industry as a whole. Regarded as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvest in critical upgrades to our nation’s infrastructure, ASCE and BSCES are working actively with regulators and stakeholders to determine how to best take advantage of funding options available.
As such, the Engineering Management Group (EMG) is planning to make this bill the focus of our Lawler Lecture, which we’re hoping to hold in early summer 2022 after a brief hiatus due to COVID. We will be assessing the format of the event in light of the evolving event restrictions from state and federal guidelines, but are excited about the prospects that this act will bring, and anxious to hear more from government leaders on this act. Please stay tuned for additional announcements on this event in the coming months.
In the past year, EMG has hosted a number of online webinars to continue offering engaging content to BSCES membership. Notable highlights include a discussion of the implications of the Massachusetts Prompt Pay Act and what it means for contractors, owners, and other project stakeholders in light of a state superior court decision earlier this year. We’ve also begun our regular “Lunch with a Leader” webinar series, featuring the perspectives of senior executives from leading local, national and international engineering firms on their time in the industry and advice for those following in their footsteps. Speakers for 2021 included Daniel Faust, executive vice president of AECOM, and Bill Hadge, former CEO of GZA. Future speakers in 2022 will include Ileen Gladstone, senior vice president of GEI, and Michael Walsh, senior vice president of CDM Smith. We are pleased to have the continuing support of distinguished engineering leaders presenting to the BSCES membership.
Upcoming Meetings and Member Recognition
Our individual members have high impact on the direction of the group and our programming. Opportunities for future executive committee leadership are available, and we welcome your support in the upcoming year. We could not achieve our success without our current dedicated executive committee members and would like to thank:
- Past Chair – Daron Kurkjian, PE, Weston & Sampson Engineers, Inc.,
- BSCES Liaison – Gregory Mirliss, STS, AECOM,
- Dan Scott, PE, Kleinfelder,
- Eric Ohanian, PE, Tighe & Bond, and
- all of our other active members who continue to make EMG a success.
Please join us for our future 2022 planning meetings, held every month, as well as our future events. For meeting and event details, please reach out to me at EMG@bsces.org, our leadership committee members, or see the BSCES events calendar at https://www.bsces.org/events.
