January 2024 President's Report
Michael R. Cunningham, PE, Senior Principal Engineer, Kleinfelder
I hope you are all having a wonderful start to 2024! The special theme of this month’s newsletter is Business Practices and our featured group is the Engineering Management Group (EMG). The mission of this group is “To promote the growth of ascending engineers in management practices including forecasting, project controls, and business operations. Focus areas are leadership, best practices, and innovative technologies.” This is a very important aspect of our profession that sometimes does not get enough attention. A successful manager of projects, clients, and operations must be skilled in managing finances and resources. Personally, I find business management training topics to be as interesting and impactful as our industry’s technical training. Last month, I led a lunch-time project management training webinar for engineering professionals and was very encouraged to see that we had over thirty participants. This is why our Engineering Management Group is vitally important to BSCES members. This group does not currently have a chair; therefore, I am asking for anyone interested in business management to consider volunteering to help the BSCES Engineering Management Group resume activities and events. If you would like to help revitalize the EMG, are unable to volunteer but have ideas for training topics, and/or would like to host an event, please let me know! I can be reached at president@bsces.org.
AECOM, which is a 2023-2024 BSCES Society Sponsor and the sponsor of this issue of BSCESNews, provided three featured articles for this newsletter that I would encourage you to read. These interesting articles are Transforming a Roadway, Connecting a Community by Elizabeth Thompson, PE, Three Principles to Successful Program Management and Delivery by Gordon Torp-Petersen, and Championing Safety for Incident-free Project Sites by Holly Brown. Thank you, AECOM, for continued sponsorship of BSCES and supporting the organization in so many other ways year after year!
In other news, we are excited to announce the upcoming Spring 2024 Professional Engineer Refresher Course, which consists of twelve classes covering both the breadth and depth portions of the five Civil Professional Engineer Exams. Sponsored by our Continuing Education Committee, this course starts Thursday, February 22, 2024, and occurs from 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays via Zoom. Click here to learn more about this course including your registration options.
BSCES has begun accepting nominations for the 2023 BSCES Section and Employer Recognition Awards!! These awards are a nice opportunity to recognize an employer, colleague, client, or other worthy individual for their accomplishments! The nominations submission deadline is Friday, February 23. Some of the awards are for BSCES members, but not all, so please review award descriptions included in the awards nomination forms, which are posted here, and make a nomination for an award. In addition, please share the awards information within your organization and encourage others to make nominations!
I wish you all a safe, happy, and healthy new year!
