January 2025 President's Report
Christopher P. Hersey, Project Executive, Suffolk Construction
This newsletter’s featured group is the Younger Member Group (YMG) and its theme of Outreach and Volunteerism. Apropos to this theme, I am pleased to report on a number of associated events.
A number of outreach events have occurred recently. The New England Future City Competition, which was sponsored by the BSCES Public Awareness & Outreach Committee, held the New England Regional Finals on January 25, 2025, at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Prior to that, the Western New England Semi-Finals took place at the Wilbraham & Monson Academy Middle School and the Eastern New England Semi-Finals was held at Wentworth. The Future City Competition Finals will take place in Washington, DC, on February 15-18, 2025. The BSCES Public Awareness Outreach Committee also hosted the BSCES Model Bridge Competition at Wentworth Institute of Technology on February 1, 2025. I’d like to thank the BSCES members and the other volunteers who helped make these well-known student competitions a great success.
I’m pleased to announce the 2024 Francis M. Keville Memorial Scholarship winner is Katerina Alexandrou, who is pursuing a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering & Construction Management Minor at Wentworth Institute of Technology. This is a $10,000 scholarship that is awarded to a student exhibiting a strong passion for transportation and construction and a drive to one day serve your community as a practicing civil engineer. Congratulations Katerina!
BSCES has a number of upcoming events, which I hope that you plan to attend.
- The Construction Institute (CI) Boston Chapter is conducting a sold-out a Site Tour of Newton-Weston I-90/I-95 Interchange Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Bundle on February 07, 2025.
- The Environmental & Water Resource Institute (EWRI) Boston Chapter is presenting a Flood Resistant Design: Building for Current and Future Conditions webinar at 12:00pm on February 13, 2025.
- The Younger Member Group (YMG) is hosting its Annual Networking & Billiards Tournament at the Beantown Pub at 5:30 PM on February 26, 2025.
Sticking with the Outreach and YMG themes, the BSCES Executive Committee February meeting will be held at Northeastern University and include a dinner discussion with members of the Northeastern University ASCE Student Chapter. We are always impressed by the energy and ideas that abound with ASCE student chapter participants, who are the engineers of the future. Following the recession in 2008 and 2009, the number of engineers was fundamentally reduced. Coupled with the retirements of the Baby Boomers, there is an apparent dearth of engineers resulting in a labor shortage where there is still a large need. I look forward to these outreach and networking opportunities. By encouraging the next engineers, who are currently attending colleges and universities, we are supporting the next generation of builders.
In closing, I’d like to point out that this newsletter features a number of interesting articles. These include the featured group article about the BSCES Younger Member Group, which was written by
Brendan Herridge from Jacobs who is our BSCES Younger Member Group chair. Kelvin Wong from Haley & Aldrich, Inc. has written a great article titled Student Outreach: Novel Efforts to Impact Communities and AEC Pipeline. BSCES Past President Mike Cunningham from Kleinfelder has authored Massachusetts Infrastructure Report Card Now Underway! 2023-2024 BSCES Legislative Fellow Bruce Jacobs has submitted his last Legislative Fellow Report – The Extension of My Fellowship.