ACEC

Preview of ACEC‘s New Project Management Course

 
Howard Birnberg, the instructor for ACEC's Project Management 101 course stopped by to talk about the 9-week course and why it is so important for engineers at every experience level.  Learn more on the course website here: https://programs.acec.org/pm101/ 

Government Affairs Update for May 21, 2020

Steve Hall, Matt Reiffer and Katharine Mottley from ACEC's Advocacy team joined Engineering Influence for our very first video podcast to give a government relations update on their Rescue, Recover, Rebuild grassroots advocacy campaign and the current status of the PPP program.
Transcript:
Host:
Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast by American Council of Engineering Companies. Today we are bringing a new kind of twist to our podcast. We're in the world of Zoom and COVID-19. We're going to try to do something visual this time and have a government affairs update with our own Steve Hall who has been practically on Zoom since the day started to um bring us up to date on what's going on with the Paycheck Protection Program. I want to give you guys a little bit of an idea of where things stand here as far as the association goes and with our industry on the PPP program. In our latest member survey on May 8th, we found that 88% of respondents reported applying for the program. And 94% of those said that they'd been approved for the PPP program and another 4% are awaiting approval.
Host:
So it was very popular with the industry and 94% let's see here. And just under two thirds, 64% of those firms plan to use all of the loan funding while 22% plan to use some of it and return to rest only 2% right now or are considering returning all of the funds. So it's a program is being accessed by our industry, many other industries. It is a monumental effort by the SBA. This is not an agency that's actually designed to do something like this to take this amount of volume of applications and this kind of money and try to get it out to the economy. It's been going well but there've been issues with guidance. Treasury and SBA have been slow to get some certainty out there with certain aspects of their FAQ. And things have changed over the past couple of days. And Steve, if you want to kind of bring us up to date on, on where the program stands and, and what Treasury and SBA have done and what really, you know, it was going on with the program right now.
Steve Hall:
Yeah, thanks Jeff. Now we're seeing some encouraging developments really over the past week and a lot of anxiety up until now, and it's lingering a bit, but over two issues really. The issue of, of certifying good faith in terms of economic uncertainty, in other words, is, is the firm worthy to, to receive this loan. And I think what we saw released last week was encouraging basically loan holders at $2 million and below are essentially defacto certified by virtue of the size of the loan. And then the guidance goes on to say that for borrowers above that $2 million SBA is going to work with them through a process to help them to to figure out if they can meet that certification threshold, but a much more encouraging tone, a much more deferential tone than perhaps we had seen in, in previous weeks.
Steve Hall:
Where there was a great deal of concern generated about you know, what SBA and the federal government take a very punitive approach to borrowers really outside of what we thought was within the intent of Congress. I think Congress really wanted to be very deferential to to borrowers and try to structure the program as such. So that was a good step on that question of certification and and I expect that we hope we'll be seeing some additional information come out on that. The next issue was loan forgiveness. You know, the core of the program and we did see some information come out earlier this week. You know, the, the application for forgiveness and the kind of data and criteria that SBA is looking for, which gives us a sense of what it was, what it's going to take to get some, most, all of your loan forgiven and some guidance with that.
Steve Hall:
I think we are expecting to see additional guidance, more comprehensive guidance forthcoming. But again, this has been helpful to our firms, to our CPAs, to, to get at least an initial sense of what the agency is looking for to satisfy that question. So, you know, good news over the last week, not a complete catalog of information that we need and where you're hoping to see that relatively soon. And as if history is any judge, you know, it may be that con or SBA and treasury continue to put out guidance in small traunches and then refine that guidance responding to questions from organizations like ACEC. And then at some point we may actually have to go back to Congress if there are structural problems or challenges that are really beyond SBAs per view to to fix where we have to amend the law. We'll do that. But we'll work hand in glove with our members before we do that and work with our CPAs. We've got a lot of very smart people working with us to you know, go through this information and to come up with recommendations that we need to deliver both to the agency and to Congress.
Host:
Because it is a popular program. And I think that the universal call or answer from, from the private sector is that they want it to be a success. So that there's a lot of, you know, it's not a adversarial relationship with, with, but the SBA and Treasury, it's more just informing them of what we need, what we need to actually make this program work as it's intended. So it's good to see that that guidance come out. And again, you know, as we get this information, of course we're putting it out anywhere we can. So we have our Coronavirus Resource page of course, which is on acec.org. It's right on the homepage when you see that. And, and we're making sure to put all this information into our normal communications to members. There's going to be a weekly message coming out from our CEO, Linda Darr. It's going to be focusing on a lot of what Steve just mentioned here and everything's been linked and it's all available for you.
Steve Hall:
And Jeff, just to add to that you know, the education side of ACEC is teed up and ready. We've got a panel of CPAs that will take part in a free webinar. Once that additional guidance comes out, we expect that we'll be well attended and we will redo it as often as we need to and as often as new guidance comes out but you know, but the organization really geared itself around getting that information in the hands of our members as soon as possible so they can make good business decisions. And and we're certainly going to continue with that.
Steve Hall:
And I know that you've been, like I said earlier, you know, you've been busy all day on Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting. We are right in the midst of a larger advocacy push under the Rescue, Rebuild and Recover kind of theme and it's been a virtual grassroots effort. Letters, emails, meetings, Zoom meetings with members of Congress. How many meetings do you think you've been on right now with, with members of the House and Senate with ACEC members across the country?
Steve Hall:
Gosh, I think we're North of total North of 70 meetings so far. And and these are happening. I've been on a few today and I know my colleagues Matt Reiffer, Katharine Mottley have been participating in these as well. And really the message has been coming back has been very encouraging, you know, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. They get it. I mean, they want, they very much want to support a recovery agenda built around infrastructure and you know, there's lingering questions as there always is about how to pay for it. But a great deal of interest in doing this. I think you know, as you've heard me say before, I think Congress is still in emergency response mode and still thinking near term needs. I think what, what may be emerging as the next package of assistance may actually be built around assisting state and local government agencies, DOD, transit agencies things of that nature.
Steve Hall:
Obviously that's something we're very supportive of, you know, anything that will prevent, you know, current projects from being interrupted or shutting down. We want to be supportive of and there does seem to be an inkling of bipartisan support emerging from this approach. So that may be the catalyst for the next package. You know, as, as Katharine indicated, there's sort of hopeful expectation. We might see something in June on that package and and then hopefully, you know, Congress then switches gears and thanks a bit longer term, you know, in a multiyear recovery agenda, you know, built around what Congress has to do this year. They've got to do a surface transportation bill to replace the fast fact by September 30, and they've got to do a big water package. And the Senate stepping out, they, they have reported all of those bills out of committee unanimously. Which is great to see. And and that gives you know, the congressional leaders in the Senate the option to package all of them together into one big package or to move them separately if they wish, but actually to get something done this year, but they got us, they got to move quickly because the clock is ticking.
Host:
Yeah, it's not in their favor. And you mentioned, you mentioned Matt and Katharine and I think they have joined us, so I'm going to switch over to a view and bring them in. And thank you both for joining in. So we have really the the, the feet on the, the, the boots on the ground here for the PPP and surface transportation effort. So Matt and Katherine, thanks for joining the interview here. Steve was going over, a lot of the PPP work has been done. A lot of the guidance coming out and of course the webinars and the meetings with members of Congress, part of our advocacy program. I mean, I know you've been on some of the meetings as well. How do you think they've gone, this is new, it's virtual instead of going actually into somebody's office and talking to somebody, you have a screen like this where you know, you have maybe 10 people or less and a member of Congress. How, how has it compared to what, you know, the traditional shoe leather lobbying that you guys do?
Katharine Mottely:
You know, Jeff, I think that's a really interesting question. I mean it is a different kind of connection. On the one hand you don't get that face to face. You, you can't really read the body language and get and get sort of that better sense of the story behind what they're telling you. On the other hand, I think it has sort of opened up these meetings to a larger swath of our members. The meetings that I've been on have had, you know, 25 members from the state with their senators and for some of them some of those folks may not have been able travel to DC on a normal basis anyway. So, you know, I think that sort of greater access for both, for our members and for the legislators can be a good thing.
Matt Reiffer:
I would agree with that. In the, in the few that I've been on what's nice is you get the Congressmen or the Senator's undivided attention for a block of time. When you're meeting in DC, almost inevitably you get interrupted by votes or committee meetings or markups or important briefings or something. But particularly for the house members who have largely been back in their districts you know, they're not, they're not getting pulled away into those sorts of things. So you get, you know, 20 to 30 minutes of their undivided attention, which is really tremendous. And there, you know, they are so eager to hear about what's going on with their constituents, where their local businesses. So it was valuable for them to hear not just here's our advocacy priorities, but you know, here's what we're working on. Here's what we're experiencing, here's what we're concerned about, you know here are plans for, you know, reopening our offices or keeping our employees safe. Here's the, you know, here's what we're doing, worksite protocols and safety, you know, just a range of things that they care about. And then, yeah, how are the aid packages that we've already approved working for you? Are they helpful? What do we need to change? Cause they want to know. So this has been really valuable input for them.
Steve Hall:
You know, Jeff, Matt made a really good point there with respect to, you know, how certainly our members reviewed on these calls. You know, because there are great conversations with lawmakers and the lawmakers and seeing each one of those faces on the screen and they're often zoom calls like this. Each one of those faces represents a firm that employs many people. So that, that, that ACC member talking is not really talking just for himself or herself. But for all of the folks that work in the firm and and that reality is not lost on lawmakers and the staff that participates on these calls these, these, these contacts resonate and really do have meaning.
Host:
And it's just not, the meetings are fantastic. So I think it provides a, it's a new way of reaching out and talking to your member of Congress in person, virtually in person. Like I said, Katharine, if you have 25 people on a call, it's hard, you're hard pressed to find, you know, 25 people don't get them into an office. Even, even a, even a ranking where a senior Member, you know, their offices aren't big enough to fit 25 people in normally. So being able to get people on a screen, you know, you get more, more bang for your buck there. But then we're also doing the traditional, you know, letter writing. We're doing, you know, emails to Members of Congress and of course, social media activity. Matt, I mean we, we've, we've topped a significant number of compared to, I think the last major push was on tax reform and I think we've kind of eclipsed the number of, of emails and messages sent. What's the last you have the last tally available? I know, I don't, don't want to spring it on you, but I know that
Matt Reiffer:
I don't, but I can click over and check and get them.
Host:
Yeah, no, that would be great 'cause I know that the number is significant.
Matt Reiffer:
Get you real time information. Hang on just a sec.
Host:
Yeah. that would be awesome because again, you know, on the, on the acc.org website you know, you'll see it right there. When you land on the page, you'll see advocacy and that takes you to the R3 - Rescue, Recover, Rebuild advocacy site where you can click to tweet. It has issue sheets. It has social media resources for, for grassroots activism. And it's really a one stop shop for everything that you need to take part in this.
Steve Hall:
You know, Jeff during tax reform. And Katharine knows this. I mean, we generated something on the order of 6,000 contacts with lawmakers and which was far and away bigger than we've ever done. And I think when, when Matt last checked this, we were rapidly closing in on that amount. So this campaign is going to go into the summer and I have no doubt that we're going to Go well beyond what we did previously.
Katharine Mottely:
And you know, Steve, just to add to that, I've heard comments from a couple of our members who remember that advocacy effort during tax reform and part of what they've communicated back is that we didn't realize that we could have such an effect. We didn't realize that our engagement through ACC and contacting our members of Congress could result in such a good outcome. And so a lot of them would have remembered that and taken it forward to this time. And they see that what they do and say and the emails they send can make a difference.
Matt Reiffer:
I just checked - we've got 2,060 member firm advocates who have taken action and delivered just about 6,400 messages to the Hill.
Steve Hall:
That may be a new record right there.
Matt Reiffer:
Tremendous outcome.
Host:
And again, yeah, this is, this is, this is in its early stages. It's going to evolve as the situation evolves. You know, we're calling for of course a focus on an infrastructure based recovery agenda. Of course that's going to be focused again and Steve, like you mentioned, FAST Act reauthorization and WRDA - two pieces of legislation that are must do's must pass bills and they're already teed up. Each chamber is working on its own respect of tracks and as you noted in the Senate, they've been marked out unanimously. There's no real bipartisan schism when it comes to WRDA and surface - they are a lot closer than people think. So the, the continued push by our grassroots to get this through is going to be significant.
Steve Hall:
It's going to be critical. Jeff, not to interrupt cause we've, we're, we're hoping to see how spills emerge in the month of June. And so you know, it'd be great if we could double those numbers in the month of June and and give some additional push behind house lawmakers to, to at least get this out of committee in the month of June and get them ready for floor consideration.
Host:
Absolutely. Well we covered PPP, we covered kind of the advocacy campaign and the, and the work you guys are doing on, on, on the individual member meetings, but then also the webinars and everything else that's going on. I mean it's, it seems like every day there's, there's, there's another webinar or three webinars that we're running to, to make sure we're covered. Anything else to think of as we enter kind of an odd Memorial day weekend?
Steve Hall:
Ah, you know, just, just the, the issues we've talked about and then side issues, you know, we're working to make sure that issues relative to from overhead are addressed and protected. You know, there is a, you know, regulatory action on the part of the department of defense that would require firms that receive forgiven loans to provide their federal clients with a credit to offset those loans. We don't think that really was the intent of Congress. We've pushed back and we actually have developed a letter that a number of organizations are signing on to, to help us push back. So that's an ongoing priority and something that Matt has been working with the rest of the team on. And as well as similar efforts in issues and potential concerns on the transportation side with respect to state DOTs and the Federal Highway Administration. You know, in addition to the big issues in Congress, there's a lot of granular issues that we're working on with respect to those issues and you know, tax issues and the tax deductability questions that are outstanding relative to firms that receive PPP loans and something that Katharine has been working on.
Matt Reiffer:
Yeah, I was going to say Katharine and I were a little late coming onto this call because we were just coming off a small firm roundtable with about 40, 45 participants, a really great forum for information sharing and helpful for us to listen to and hear what firms are experiencing. And yeah, there are a lot of interest in both of those issues. A lot of those firms took PPP loans, are interested in forgiveness, interested in the tax component of that as well as the potential impact on their overhead rates in terms of loan forgiveness and how that may be treated for federal state contractors. So yeah, very timely and yeah, very interesting.
Host:
Yeah, it's nonstop with government affairs right now. So I know it's we're coming on to about half an hour. I know you guys have a busy packed schedule, so I really appreciate you all taking the time to to appear on a kind of an oddly I guess just figure we live on Zoom now. Might as well tried to do a video interview instead of just the the, the good old audio podcast that we do. So thank you for being on. And again, this is Engineering Influence brought to you by the American Council of Engineering Companies. Katharine, Matt, Steve have a great Memorial Day weekend. Stay safe, stay healthy and and stay engaged with us 'cause we are off to the races. Just go to acec.org click on advocacy. It's right there on the homepage. It'll take you right there to the R3 advocacy page, all the resources that you need to take advantage of the grassroots campaign we're running. It's all there for you and just take advantage of it. So thank you all for being on.
 

Business Continuity and Adaption in the Time of COVID-19

Sean Goldwasser, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for Black & Veatch's Water Business in North America, joined the podcast to discuss how the firm is adapting to the challenges of conducting business in the age of COVID-19.
Transcript:
Host:Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast by the American Council of Engineering Companies. And we're coming to you today with another part of our ongoing series that really focuses in on the big new story of the, of the day that we're all living through, which is the coronavirus pandemic and specifically how the industry, the engineering industry, is dealing with this really unforeseen and unprecedented challenge. And today I'm very pleased to be joined by Shawn Goldwasser. He is the Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for Black and Veatch's water business in North America. And Sean really brings some good perspectives from the industry as far as how Black and Veatch has adapted the main concerns that they have related to the coronavirus pandemic, both internally from a business standpoint and external also from a client side. And Sean, I really appreciate you coming on the show to provide your perspectives here. I guess first off, let's just talk about, you know, how are things where, where are you working now and, and, and kinda how is the, how's the environment that you've adapted to.
Sean:Jeff, thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. So, so like a lot of people today I'm working from my house. I've got a family of four, a college student and a high school student, and we're all sharing bandwidth and they're doing their home studies. And as I'm doing work from home and, and it's, it's a good problem to have, I'll put it this way. So Kansas City both on the Kansas and Missouri side, it's been relatively mild here. We don't have the same size of populations that you're talking about. And some of those coastal areas we still do have international travel covers, but again, not to the same level you'd expect to see in California or New York, that type of thing. So the actual number of cases that have happened here have been quite a lot fewer if for no other reason than just because the population is smaller as well. I would say that people in the community at large seems to be dealing with it with relative calm but with the same concern and uncertainty you see everywhere.
Host:Absolutely. And how's your firm dealing with the the change to remote work and and how are you dealing with the work still with the clients on sites?
Sean:Yeah, so that's actually been as much as you can say some things like this is success, right? I think for our discussions today I'm going to be positive because think having a positive attitude is important. But I also want to make sure we say there's a lot of people that are going to become, if they haven't already become seriously ill and some people are easily going to lose their lives over this. So I don't want any of my positive attitude to trivialize the very nature of what this is. But I think having a positive attitude and looking at the bright side and what opportunities are as important for this. We've been looking at our response to this essentially unprecedented event in sort of a three part approach because you've got to break it apart into something that you can get your arms around. You know, first and foremost we're looking at, well what do we need to do to best ensure the safety of our professionals?
Sean:That includes effectively people and their families, right? Cause if professionals get ill, families get ill. That whole thing unwinds the same thing extends very quickly to our clients. So we moved to a work from home model very quickly. You know, once you've got that basic safety issue, reasonably taken care of, not perfected, but regionally taken care of, then we're talking about, well how do we adapt now that people are in their homes, can we continue to function and how's that gonna work? So what technology are we employing as a business to allow the nature of the work that we do that is usually in normal traditional office spaces and in client spaces. How does that work in a, in a world where face to face contact isn't prudent. And then once we've gotten that stabilized into a functional level, then we start talking more nearness about what does that mean to the longer term business here in the mirror, the mid and long term of opportunities and, and to make sure that the clients continue to get their needs met. That's the important part as well.
Host:Absolutely. And especially in your sector, which is so critical because it is essentially critical infrastructure and an essential role dealing with water, water pipe, you know, water networks ensuring that people have continual, uninterrupted access to clean water. That we're dealing with water management properly. I mean these are things which are, they need to be stepped up. Not this is when you put the pedal on the gas instead of slowing down.
Sean:Equally true when it comes to power, telecommunications and oil and gas, other aspects of the businesses that we serve in terms of critical given infrastructure just as true.
Host:Absolutely. I mean this is, this is really where the value of what you do comes into play because people relying on those public services to stay active and open. I mean I, for one when I went into the grocery store and I noticed all the water, you know, flying off the shelves and my mind was like, well, you know, this is the water systems are staying on. But then the thought crossed my mind, what would happen - God help us - What would happen if there was some lapse or breakdown in our critical infrastructure, like our power, like our water systems and what would that mean for communities and for regions and being able to pivot to a work from home model, a remote, you know, socially distant model while still enabling the clients that you have in the water space and in, in the public infrastructure space to get their job done. That an in such a short time. I think that's the most amazing thing that you're able to pivot so quickly is, is really impressive. And, and, and must be, you might be you know, writing, writing the manual as you, as you live it.
Sean:Yeah. I'm, I'm afraid to get too cocky with that because the universe has a way of humbling people that get that way. You know, it, it hasn't been perfect, but it's been pretty good. I will tell you we have, we didn't, we didn't make up how to respond to this overnight. Right. There were things that we had in place. Not, I wouldn't say that we anticipated this kind of an event cause we didn't. But from a business practice standpoint, we engage in something called business continuity planning where we're really more looking at what happens if the professionals can't in the Kansas City office couldn't come to work because there was a fire in the building that day. But what if there was an earthquake in Los Angeles and the professionals couldn't get into that office. And that day our business continuity plans talk about how are we going to respond if that happens.
Sean:We weren't really thinking about it from the standpoint of everybody in every office globally needs to work remotely. But as it's happened, as it happens, the things that, that we had put in place to mitigate these risks have served us very well in terms of remote working tools and network connectivity. We use a lot of video conferencing. We used it before on people's individual machines. Well that actually serves, there's no substitute for face to face contact, but it served us very well. So when I look at things like things, again, things that we didn't anticipate to be used in this, but our, our strategic plan talks about working in new ways, being rapidly evolving and highly innovative. We were really thinking about that from the standpoint of business disruption and how businesses changing evolve over time. When I look to what this has resulted in the need for us to do, those things are just as equally important as we respond to this crisis as opposed to just changes in business.
Host:Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think the the important lesson there is regardless of the size of the firm doing that business continuity planning doing that crisis management exercise and having a plan in place and being able to have something to rely on in cases like this is so critically important. And out of curiosity, how, I mean, how, if you, if, if you can go into detail on this, I'm not sure, but you know, how, how frequently does Black and Veatch reassess over time It's continuity plan in, your experience, you know, is it the kind of thing which was done on an annual basis, biannual or sooner so you can keep, you know, keep that fresh.
Sean:Yeah, there are aspects of it that I probably shouldn't share with you or couldn't share with you, but this is a fair question to ask. And it so happens that I am responsible for this business continuity process within the water business anyway. And we look at it yearly, every year and we look at what did we say last year and what would our response be given the tools, systems, practices and demands we have in front of us. And if the event happened this year, what would be different? Our offices changed. Our needs changed. Digital risks can change. So it doesn't, once you have something in place, it doesn't take a lot to update it and it's proven to be pretty important to us.
Host:Yeah. I guess the main lesson is to get something in place and then just don't put it on a shelf but, but keep it out and refresh it once in a while so that you can quickly pivot and move to a, you know, put it in action. So that, that's really important for I think at all executives understand the importance of that. So I mean, from an internal perspective, it seems that you had a plan in place, you're able to act on it from the external side, the client facing side. How has this impacted or, or created opportunities potentially to apply your expertise into areas related to really the situation right now with the, with the pandemic, not just healthcare of course, because this is widespread. There are many other areas where, where you know, agencies and, and, and utilities and public sector clients need help.
Sean:Yeah. I would say there's probably a, what comes to mind anyway as a sort of a two part answer to your question, there's the ability to work with your clients, which are our long-term business partners. These are entities and people that we've worked with for a long time on these critical human infrastructure issues. Their needs are changing as well. What's coming at them is coming at them very quickly, both in terms of real technical and delivery challenges and the public perception issues. We're working with a lot of water entities that are having to go out while having to not having to choosing to go out and be very public saying, don't worry, your water system is not at risk. This is not a waterborne illness. It doesn't represent a risk of disruption of service. There is no real risk of that, but the public procedure to be when it becomes a problem for those clients, so working with them to help understand what that means to how the communicate it is useful. We've been sharing some of our tools and practices with them because we are pretty good at working remotely because we travel. A lot of our business people travel across different sectors. Our clients don't always have that same structure. So their ability to work remotely and be dispersed is different than ours is. We've talked a little bit with some of the clients about how to adapt in near term and being remote because not all of them have the IT systems in place to do this kind of thing.
Host:Oh no, I was just going to save that. That, you know, that kind of goes to the idea that we always say if, of course a normal times of you know, engineer's and their client, that relationship, it's that trusted advisor relationship. It's not always just you know, the direct day to day of either designing or maintaining or acting in support of a utility and making sure that things work on time. It's also providing that leadership, that experience and best practices to help their clients understand and approach problems with solutions. So that's, I think that's a good example of that.
Sean:And those who had been a lot of our initial conversations, not all by any means, but a lot of our initial conversations with clients talking about, well, what, what has this crisis to you as an, as an, as a client, as a different business? What does that done? What new challenges is it causing you to have to face, you know, in some cases we're going to have solutions to that. In some cases we're going to help you work for your solutions to that. Some of those are relatively simple. Some of them are not.Host:In certain circumstances like this. And I think you put it very well that it's managing perception and it's helping the clients understand the best way to communicate something that you're fighting. The idea that PR perception becomes reality and people might react incorrectly in crisis situations. Largely have you seen an impact from you helping your clients communicate the fact that you know, things are gonna happen. You know, things are still going up. You turn the tap water is still going to happen. You don't have to worry. That doesn't involve water. You know, has that seen success in your mind?
Sean:I think so. I think most of our clients were reasonably well along the way to solving those issues. I don't know that that was the most pressing issue facing them. I think for most of our clients, the more pressing issues are how do they maintain business continuity. The issue of public perception is real. It very much is real, but it probably was not as much of a threat to their business as the disruption of not being able to work in the same way as they were used to working with working under I think is probably a bigger threat. Absolutely. And then some instances, you know, if you're, if those clients is, supply chains are disrupted, that kind of thing. That's, that's a much more, that's a much more serious challenge. You know, and it's causing some, some new things altogether. Some new things that's not very specific, but we, we talk about one of the things as an example.
Sean:I mean there's, some of this is run of the mill and some of his brother mundane, but some of it's actually a little bit sort of potentially pretty exciting. You know, one of the things you keep hearing about is the testing, right? We talk about testing, well we, the news talks about testing for this virus and the number of test kits that are available and the duration of time it takes to get results. One of the things that public entities across world, not just the U S are looking at is how do we know when we've peaked? Right? That's a key question here. How do you know when you've peaked? And if you, if the metric for that is the number of tests you can run, but the test kits are limited and the analytical capacity is limited. Is there a different way of doing it?
Sean:But one of the things we were already working on is a business and still in an experimental stage where essentially data analytic side of sensors and I'm not a technology expert in this kind of thing, but we were looking at sensors that could be put in wastewater streams to test for certain pathogens. And with the idea being, could you test for the presence and concentration of pathogens in a wastewater stream? And when we apply that kind of concept today, what if we were able to take that same technology, apply those sensors to wastewater streams and be able to track the presence and quantity or relative presence of this pathogen, COVID-19, the virus in a wastewater stream that would eliminate the need for the public health agencies to have to go test every single person to then go know what, what is the path? Are we peaked on a curve or not, because at least use that wastewater stream data to say has a given location peaked? It wouldn't tell you anything about individuals, but it might help you make good public health decisions at a city or state level. That's still in development. You know, we're not looking - I don't think it's realistic we'll say, we'll roll that out tomorrow. It's not that kind of thing, but it's a real technology. So as we were already working on that we've converted to see, can we apply it to this?
Host:That's a, that's a great example of the use of and the importance of data. And it's not just the collection of the data, but it's, it's just the interpretation and how can you apply different technologies that are being developed to different challenges. And that would be, you know, I could, I could immediately see how useful that would be for a governor or for, you know, FEMA or the CDC to get a better regional or, or scatter a map of, of potential concentrations of a pathogen. Not just COVID-19, but anything. If you're able to use those sensors and leverage that data in a way where you can assist policy makers making decisions it's a perfect example of applying a technology to a different problem, and adapting it to meet it.
Sean:Yeah. Other examples like that where we're sort of looking at things that we were already trying to put in place. Things were already exploring, you know, something else we were trying to do. I was telling you earlier about the, the company focused on being rapidly evolving and looking at that from a different way of being a disruptor in the business. We've got something we call our incubator and we use that as a way to try to draw out new ideas, whether they're directly connected to our core businesses or whether there potentially somehow tangential to that. And using that to find partners that are, again, not necessarily part of our normal supply chain to see could they come up with something clever and interesting that disrupts a given business that comes up with a new idea. We've got some press releases out now actually that are reflective of this. Trying to find, are there other partners that have ideas about how, some idea that they have that could improve our, our society's ability to deal with this virus.
Host:Yeah. I see that front and center on your website with the ignite X code 19 response accelerator as, as,
Sean:And our growth accelerator. We can put money into that and find ways to collaborate.
Host:Absolutely. And that's, that's, that's the power of just, you know, getting, I, it's great to see because a firm like yours can can play that pivotal role of connecting someone with a good idea and turning that into action. And it's a good example of the private sector innovation kind of, you know, playing a large role into responding to situations like this because you can move quicker. And you can present solutions faster than, you know, let's say the government would be able to and you'll be able to provide the government the solution that they might've been looking for and not even knowing that they actually needed. So that, that is great.
Sean:One of the other things we're looking to do here is to see how we can in a more traditional sense probably, but how we can be a part of helping mitigate one of the potential real risks that we're facing from a healthcare industry and standpoint. And that is you see the news for New York city and none of this is critical of New York city that are facing a huge wave of numbers coming at them. But you see the news stories that have a hospitals and emergency rooms jammed with people and people lined up in hallways. They're just absolutely being overwhelmed with the number of cases coming in. Both have terms of COVID potential COVID-19 patients plus our normal load of people that are just sick for other reasons. Somebody breaks their arm, that kind of thing. You know what, what we find, I think we're seeing is that the healthcare systems understandably, are not set up.
Sean:The physical infrastructure is not set up to deal with the numbers of people you have to triage to make that work. And also you have a secondary risk when you put that many people in proximity, even ones that are coming in for a different reason may end up becoming infected due to the proximity of the people. So is there a way to look at creating these modular temporary hospital setups? We were looking at that right now. Modular, rapid modular health system where we could go essentially augment existing health systems, hospitals and put a, you want to think of it like a treatment diagram, a flow diagram, put a module for additional physical infrastructure to allow for triage ahead of the hospital emergency room to alleviate some of that difficulty. That's something that we're working with some of our private partners and potentially in government agencies with to see if there's an opportunity there to go provide that assistance because we have the infrastructure experience, building experience and process and technology experience to help in those arenas.
Host:And that's, that's something which is going to be I think, increasingly important, not just in this circumstance but in, in as, especially from the policy side in Washington, we start talking a lot more about resilience in term of in terms of essentially everything, social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, responding to potential disasters, manmade or natural and having that capability to assist you know, public health in responding quickly it could help change the way that we respond to future disasters which is of critical importance.
Sean:And I think your point about responding quickly really is one of the key pieces. Any of these entities could decide that they need additional triaged capacity ahead of a given medical facility, but normal practices would take years to get that put in place. We don't have years to get that put in place. You know, if this is going to be effective and mitigate the risks to people in a system that could easily become overwhelmed with patients, it's going to have to be done quickly.
Host:It's going to be interesting coming out of this and, and kind of looking ahead in the crystal ball about how Congress and policymakers are going to be looking at this. I mean there's talk of course about the committee that's already been drawn up, but the relevant agencies that deal with our industry, especially in the House side with Transportation and Infrastructure, they have jurisdiction also over FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. It's going to be interesting to see how they, how this opens their eyes to these different aspects of the need to move quickly, to move rapidly. And what kind of systems are in place or could be in place and to create the flexibility for companies like yours to be able to partner with agencies to really get these things from the testing phase or, or the drawing board into rapid implementation. And that'll be something that I'm sure we'll be looking at from ACEC National's perspective. And of course, you know, regionally from the state level and local. So that's, that's a really important thing. Is there anything else that you are kind of working on right now that could potentially be applied to this or any other kind of situation of national concern?
Sean:I think the thing comes to mind for me at the moment in response to that question probably has more to do with the longer term implications of what this pandemic is going to teach us all about how position, how to prepare, how to be able to respond to something that you didn't see coming. Because again, certainly there are people that have been warning globally about this type of a pandemic, but that's been going on for a long time. What is the opportunity for us as a business but for society at large and for our clients as well to look at, okay, what can we learn from this and what would we put in place to allow us to be flexible and responsive and resilient? That resilience discussion is probably one that I think will play very strongly. It will be very important for our clients in the future and for us as well as a business. Right? Absolutely. A lot of what we did, it hasn't been perfect, but it's, it's served us pretty well and having the ability to arrange yourself in a way that provides resilience is probably going to be increasingly important and better understood moving forward.
Host:Yeah, I mean today's emergency is tomorrow's kind of manual for best practice too. So the work that's being done now, like I said, it might not be perfect, but it's working can be the testbed for a future response, which is know critically important for everyone. From the public sector, you know, policy side down to the people who are going to be receiving the the care where there's going to be, you know, health care or, or disaster recovery or, or what have you.
Sean:And even if we take it outside the realm of public health and just think back to the providers of infrastructure, you know, the, the power generation, the telecommunication providers, water providers, all that kind of thing. The, the cost of providing resiliency measures for yourself and you can do it upfront before there's a crisis can be quite a lot less expensive than dealing with the crisis where it prevents you from operating.
Host:Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Sean:We'll see an improved understanding of that and then increased willingness to spend reasonable amounts of money to achieve better resilience.
Host:Absolutely. And, and, and knowing the past work that was done in previous, previous legislation on the Hill moving towards that the pre-disaster mitigation work you can lower the cost. It's always cheaper if you can do it on the front end than if you're forced to do it on the back end and if the engineering industry and firms like yours can get in on that conversation at the start, help shape that policy work, it can lower the burden for taxpayers and speed up the process. And it's that focus on pre disaster mitigation, which is so important.
Sean:I agree. Very much agree.
Host:Well, Sean I really do appreciate you coming on the show. I think that your perspectives both the firm-wide from Black and Veatch and then also individually from your position in the firm in the public public sector side and the water side is critically important for, for our audience and for our members to hear. I would say enjoy a nice weekend coming up. I hope you can get outside a little bit. I, it's a, it's a daunting challenge these days with, with separation - social distancing.
Sean:Yup. Well we'll, we'll find a way, right? There's way to do that. Able to get outside enough to stretch our legs and keep our bodies. Well, I appreciate the ability to talk to you today and your listeners on this podcast. I think it's an important discussion to be having at the level of our industry and I think there are meaningful things we can learn from this and take forward to make it to improve society in general at large.
Host:Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there is a, there is a, there is a very bright silver lining in the storm cloud. And I think that together industry-wide, we can learn and we can improve from this and, and come out stronger for it. And, and the work that you guys are doing at Black and Veatch is definitely helping to make that a reality. Keep us apprised of any new developments. We'd love to have you back on but thank you so much.
Sean:Very welcome, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you.

The Chairman's Corner - Engineering During the Coronavirus Pandemic

ACEC Board Chair Mitch Simpler stopped by the program today to discuss the new world our industry finds itself in with COVID-19 and how the engineering industry is adapting to meet the challenges ahead.

ACEC Coalitions Update

Engineering Influence sat down with Matt Murello and Kevin Peterson to get an update on ACEC Coalitions.
Transcript:
Host: Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a Podcast by the American Council of Engineering companies. Today we are very happy to bring you an coalition update and to give us an update on what's happening in coalitions we welcome coalitions Chair, Kevin Peterson. He's president and CEO of P2S Incorporated out of long beach, California and coalition Chair-elect, Matt Murello, president of Louis S. Goodfriend and Associates. He's out of Chester, New Jersey. So welcome to you both and one of who, kind of start off with a update on advocacy and the coalitions, what's happening in advocacy.
Kevin: Thank you, Jeff. This is Kevin. And currently we're developing our 2020 coalition advocacy agenda in consultation with the ACEC advocacy and external affairs department. We're happy to report that our coalitions continue to be strong contributors to the ACEC PAC. Last year we were represented 55% of the total PAC dollars from our members, up a couple percentage points from the previous year.
Host: And that's really good news. The PAC is one of our strongest tools to advocate our position so that is good news. From the membership side of the coin, where are things looking at coalitions?
Matt: Thanks Jeff. This is Matt Murello. And so every year, one of our coalitions or sometimes too, we have a recruitment drive, which is steered by the the ExCom of that coalition. And this year we started a new drive for the geo professionals coalition in November, netted 16 new members. And we also implemented a recruitment drive for both CAMEE, COPS and Land Development, which got us six more community volunteers. So we're looking forward to continuing to increase our numbers. I believe we're up by another 2% this year. And continuing to spread the word of the value of coalitions.
Host: That's fantastic. That's, that's, that's key because membership into the coalitions, it's easier than people think. And we need to get the word out there for ACEC members that it doesn't take much to join. And recruitment efforts like that, recruitment drives are critically important to start getting more people involved. And one of the benefits one of the benefits once you are a member is education which is another big area that we're looking to work on. So what's happening with education sessions with coalitions and events?
Kevin: So let me, let me update you on what we did in the 2019 fall conference in Chicago and coalition sponsored seven education sessions. We had also had five member round tables during that conference. In terms of, in between conferences. At the end of this week we have our 2020 small firm coalition winter meeting, taking place in Dallas focusing on leadership at all levels. We expect that to be a very successful event and later this month we'll have our 2020 coalition winter member meeting that's going to be held February 27th and 28th in New Orleans. And it really will be exploring the future of design software technologies. And a lot of our coalitions are also doing ExCom meetings. At that meeting. So it should be a very successful event right after Mardi Gras.
Host: Ah, that's, that's a perfect time to be down there right after the party stops. When you can actually move around and registration, I understand us is now open for that winter meetings, is that correct?
Kevin: It is. And, and they can find the registration link on, on the ACEC website.Host: Fantastic. Publications are another area that we really focus in on. It's, it kinda builds off of the education piece. Have there been any updates on publications in the coalitions?
Matt: Yeah, there has. And you know, you hit the nail on the head when you talk about one of the distinct advantages to being a member of the coalitions and with all the coalitions being in one group a membership to any one of the coalitions allows you access to all of these documents. And if anyone from ACEC were to purchase them and were not a member of the coalitions, it would cost thousands of dollars. And the, the documents are constantly being updated since July 1st we have a seven new or seven documents, four that have been updated and three new ones. The new ones are come from our CASE and new Geoprofessionals Coalition on lessons learned as well as commentary of the ASCE design procedures and health and safety plan checklist. So this is a process that's always going. We usually have between five and 10 updated or new per year and we're continuing moving in that direction. We also have in November-December Engineering, Inc., we featured our coalition leaders talking about prospects in resiliency, changes in leadership and climate change. So we're, we're out there our leaders are out there and talking about industry trends.
Host: Yeah, that's a really good point Matt, because like you said, if you went off and you tried to source these publications on your own and you tried to buy them or, or just find them somewhere it would get expensive really quickly. And being a member of the coalitions gives you that amazing library of content that if you are a sole practitioner or a small firm and you're trying to get your leadership educated and you're trying to figure out, you know, different business strategies or contracts, you know, the coalitions just gives you a treasure trove of material that you can just get access to, which is just so beneficial.
Matt: Yeah. And Jeff, I mean, most of our most of our publications that come from the coalitions may be practice oriented. So you know, if they're for structural engineers or for the mechanical electrical group but a good chunk of them, I would say probably close to a quarter of them are business centered. So if you are, like you said, a small firm and you're looking for that HR document or you're looking for a basic on how to basic contracts and setting up a new office or some employee handbook issues, chances are somebody has already spent the time and capital in putting something that you might be able to at least make as a starting point as opposed to trying to reinvent the wheel. And it's, it's an invaluable resource for coalitions we find.
Host: And then I guess the last part is operations and how everything's being structured. Have there been any operational changes within the the coalition structure to note?
Kevin: One thing to note is when we started out coalitions years ago, some of those were councils to begin with. And we decided late last year that we wanted to have our, a consistent branding across our coalition. So the ones that had council in their name, we've, we've officially now renamed them to coalitions. So coalitions will appear everywhere in our branding and counsel is now being put to put the rest. We also last year recognized Mike Snyder from Dewberry as a recipient of our sixth annual Coalition Distinguished Service Award. That's something that we give out every year at the fall conference.
Host: All right. So that was kind of the top list of materials and things going on with coalitions. Is there anything else going on you guys want to add? A kind of free fire zone here about coalitions or, or anything you want to get across to our audience? Being our, our the leaders of our ACEC coalitions?
Kevin: This is Kevin and I, I would just recommend that anyone who's a member of ACC and especially new members who join, if they have any questions related to coalitions that they please reach out and they can find our contact information on the website. They can also contact Heather at ACEC headquarters. We're more than willing to share some of our personal experience in dealing with coalitions and how it's benefited our own organizations.
Host: Wonderful. Well, I want to thank you both for taking some time out of your day. And thanks again for giving us an update on ACEC Coalitions. It's all good news across the board and we're looking at growth and expanding our footprint of our coalitions in 2020. And thank you for being on the show and look forward to having you on again soon.

Engineering Influence Welcomes the Hosts of the Close of Business Podcast from Black & Veatch

Engineering Influence welcomes Kevin Flaker, Becca Schmidt, & Ryan Karlin, the hosts of the “Close of Business” podcast. Kevin, Becca and Ryan are all young professional engineers at Black & Veatch who started the podcast as a place for young professionals in STEM to discuss all issues related to tech, innovation, work/life balance and any and all issues related to the science and engineering industries.  Subscribe to their podcast on Spotify, the Apple podcast here and wherever podcasts are heard.  Check them out!
Transcript:
Host: Welcome to another episode of the engineering influence podcast. ACC is regular series of podcasts. We're here today with the three presenters of the close of business podcast, which they build is the one and only podcast for young STEM professionals. All three are engineers at black and Veatch. So why don't we start off by the, each of you introducing yourself and telling us a little about yourself.
Kevin: All right. I don't know. I'll go ahead and my name is Kevin flaker and first thank you for having us on and letting us join your podcast. We've all three are engineers at Black & Veatch. I am an electrical engineer. I work in the solar design business. I design solar fields for a living and podcasting is, I guess as you would say, a side hustle for me.
Becca: My name's Becca Schmidt. I'm also, I'm an engineer mechanical engineer who's been focused on designing a natural gas fired power plants and just transitioned over to to doing business development and sales, more client facing work.
Ryan: And then I'm the third cohost. A name is Ryan Carlin. Instead of those two, I am a civil engineer, so he got all of covered. I have been focused in the power delivery group transmission line and substation work. So kind of diverse engineers within the power business. But all have love for podcasts. Yeah.
Host: Yeah. I've really enjoyed it. I've listened to a few of them and they're really well done. It sounds like you guys have a lot of fun doing it. It, you, when you first started, you were saying that, you know, this is, this is from people who have never looked up on Google how to do a podcast. How did, how did you guys decide to do a podcast?
Kevin: Yeah, so a couple of years ago, a few of us were pulled into somewhat of a roundtable here at Black & Veatch. And the purpose of the discussion was to look for ways for Black & Veatch to engage more in the community. We're a severely industrial or in the past we're heavy in the industrial power water, telecom businesses and not necessarily more on the commercial side. So we were just kind of throwing around ideas for ways for us to connect into the community. And I happened to just start getting into podcasts and listen to podcasts and love how much you can learn. So I threw this idea out there that, you know, we could create this podcast. It would be a way for us to engage with community on the different projects we're doing. The work we're doing at Black & Veatch. But then also selfishly it was going to be, if it went through a cool way for me to being a recent graduate, look up all these different cool industry technologies that were emerging as well as all the different things Black & Veatch was doing.
Kevin: And being able to like research that for myself as well as share that on the podcast format with the community. And what that's transformed into today is not so much of a, here's what we do at Black & Veatch, but more of a, here's a generic STEM podcast where we talk about technology across, we try to reach all industries, not just power or water, telecom. Oh, you know, we talk about autonomous vehicles and the Hyperloop, just any really cool thing going on in the STEM industry and just bring that to the community. And I guess utilize Black & Veatch's knowledge when when applicable.
Becca: And in addition to that, we talked a lot about engaging with the millennial workforce, the millennial group. We felt like there's this external perception of what engineers and people working in the STEM industry are really like. And the three of us kind of like to categorize ourselves as something that's kind of against the grain, not the typical stereotypical, nerdy, nerdy engineer, you know, and we wanted to present, you know, what it can be like to be an engineer, that it's this really cool and exciting thing and it doesn't have to be over complicated or super nerdy.
Becca: It can be talking about just cool things going on in the STEM industry, literally over beers and communicating it in a really digestible, relatable way too.
Ryan:  And that's kind of just to give a hindsight how we got the name close of business. So it was all meant around, you know, having to close the business, you know, when everyone goes home or goes to a happy hour, kind of just talking recent news or STEM-related stuff in a fun and kind of informal manner. So we try to kind of play on that and have an informative yet fun kind of atmosphere.
Becca: Kind of a long winded response. But we put it all on the table.
Host: It really comes across and I especially in your early ones when when you were sort of finding your feet what do, I mean all three of you are, are really quite young. I mean, I, if I'm right, I mean you're all graduated since like 2015 or 2014 is is what does that bring, do you think to your, your program? I mean, you know, the, the picture of the old stodgy engineer with the time and you guys are not that obviously, but it, what impact does your age do you think have on this?
Ryan: I think I mean one is just a different perspective, you know, we don't know what we don't know type of thing, so we're not afraid to ask questions. Kind of along the same lines of our audience. We're learning just as much when we're preparing for these episodes as our listeners. So I mean, I think, I think that's one big thing that I see.
Kevin: Yeah. I guess one of the focuses or one of the, one of the purposes for this podcast would be to kind of grow and influence STEM in younger generations, whether that be college students who are studying in the field and are, or maybe flirting with the idea of getting into STEM industry, but don't really know, like, you know, that's a huge entry point when you start talking science and tech. It's kind of scary, daunting at first or even high schoolers who are interested. So I think like we're able to bridge the gap to where we can communicate with the experts in the industry. We have the connections, but at the same time, we're still learning ourselves. So we're able to, as Ryan mentioned, ask the questions that the everyday listener would be asking. You know, we're not experts. We hardly know what we're talking about. And I think that's kind of our trick.
Becca: Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of the perception that of that I've had with the people that I work with here is that, you know, they're experts now, but what were they like when they were developing as young adults, young people in their career. And I think we're all kind of like finding ourselves when we're learning throughout our, our careers and also learning what it's like to be a young adult in early on in your career, in developing through all of that. It's something that people don't really talk about as much. And in reality, when we all started working full time, we didn't know we were doing, Oh, that's totally fine to community, still trying to communicate that, you know. And that's something that we are really passionate about engaging with our listeners on as well.
Host: Yeah, no, you can hear the passion obviously, and the enthusiasm. I mean, what have you, have you learned about your listeners at all? Do you know who they are? You know, are they, are they the young people who are thinking about getting into STEM or are they other engineers?
Ryan: I'd say it's kind of a wide range. So we've gone to college career fairs and some people have listened to the podcasts, you know, they love it and they say they get good stuff out of it. But then also, you know, we do episodes kind of internally and they're released and we have executives come up to us whether within black and Veatch or external companies, and they kind of share their interests and kind of excitement about the podcast. So, I mean, I think just, we're geared towards young professionals, but I don't think that really leaves us out of, you know, Quinn Robinson, who's on your guys's board. He's a big fan as well. And I want to call him a young professional. So it kind of all ages, I guess, in that sense. Yeah.
Host: Yeah. How do you guys how do you come up with your, to your topics, the, I mean you've done 33 so far, that's a lot of things to think of and, and, and bring and research and bring to the air.
Becca: Yeah. It's a combination of tapping into all of the different things that are all the different innovative things that are happening within Black & Veatch. A lot of the people that we've interviewed so far professionals that are doing really awesome, big innovative things within the company and we're excited about it and we want to communicate that with the, within the world, what we want to commute that out into the community. And then also just things we're interested in too. A lot of times it's us just we're on the internet work, curious reading about what's going on in that STEM industry and we'll talk about it amongst ourselves and we're like, this is a really cool thing to do, a podcast episode about.
Kevin: And one cool thing that's happening is as we grow within Black & Veatch, we have more and more people reaching out to us with topic ideas or inviting us to go to conferences where, you know, we just came back from San Francisco at a Singularity University summit where there are topics talking about, you know, Bitcoin and digital currency, AI, space, like all these really cool topics and you know, we're getting invited to go there. So we find our topics via presenters at these conferences or you know, clients of Black & Veatch, you know, black and beaches worked with Tesla or Volkswagen with the electrify America. So, you know, our clients are also the ones who are out there innovating in this industry. So we're, we're being put in contact with a bunch of different people as well.
Host: I mean, I tell that you guys were at Power Gen I mean, you guys do get around it. I mean, is it is it the podcast taking you there or are you going there and then using that for the podcast?
Kevin: Well, I think it's 100% the podcast taking us there.
Ryan: Yeah, we've definitely got a lot of support from within Black & Veatch. I mean they really liked the idea of the podcast and kind of what we bring to the table. And so Black & Veatch has really been supportive about, you know, giving us a budget. And that budget allows us to do things like, you know, buy new fancy equipment or go to these conferences or I may have you, so I really say it's a podcast that's really funded a lot of this. Yeah.
Host: Yeah. I would say the you know, it doesn't feel like a Black & Veatch podcast if at all. It feel, I mean, I guess when you mention it, yeah, you do talk to a lot of Black & Veatch people, but it doesn't feel like you're doing this to promote the company, you know, which is great.
Kevin: That's a very important point. We don't, we don't want to be a podcast that shoves Black & Veatch down the listeners throat because that will just be a turnoff in all honesty. It's an obvious marketing scheme and that's not what we are here. We're, we're basically utilizing our contacts because we work with these people. They know us, they reach out to us the most. But as we see I'm willing to bet if we were to look back, like the first half are mainly Black & Veatch centric, but as we started to expand and grow our network, we are focusing on I don't want to do you want to call it external initiatives and stuff like that. So we definitely want to utilize Black & Veatch when we can, but we also don't want to, you know, make it all about Black & Veatch.
Host: Yeah. What looking back over all the, the episodes, what are some of your favorite episodes that people might want to, to listen to?
Becca: Yeah. I think one of my personal favorites was when we had the opportunity to interview Eric Anderson who is the executive chairman for top golf and CEO for West River Group. That was a great opportunity because that's PR one because it was one of the most high profile people that we've been able to sit down and talk to, but also a lot of the business and leadership and entrepreneurship insights that he gave us were completely invaluable. And then also the additional content that we have on that episode. We focus on technology and sports and the three of us are really big sports fans. And so it was kind of like a wonderful merging of worlds and just us being able to really truly show our personality and show our interest on that episode. That's definitely one of my favorite ones. And Kevin's having a hard time deciding,
Kevin: I've got a couple, I'll give you two, I guess. One of my favorites I guess I would say would be the Hyperloop, one of the Hyperloop discussions we had, and this was kind of more early on at around episode 10 or so. Yeah, but it was, I mean, Hyperloops kind of continued to get a lot of the limelight and just selfishly, you know, I learned a lot from doing that episode about what Hyperloop is. So I mean, I think that's on the kind of still applies today even though that was maybe one a year ago. And then the other one probably I would say is he's a little bit of a wild card. But Tom Friend we interviewed him at PowerGen. He just give a quick background. He's like, was what? He was in the air force and then now he w he was a consultant for Duke Energy. He's a scrum or like agility consultant. He's kind of all over the place. But super fascinating and intriguing guy. And that was probably one of my favorites
Becca: Talk about somebody who's passionate about learning. Tom Friend was the most passionate about learning.
Ryan:  Yeah, he was, it was a fun interview. I think, you know, I just, I just want to say all of the guests you've had and all the topics we've covered are great. Let me just put that out there. My, my favorite is probably the Prekapa Sankar interview that we just completed at singularity university, mainly because this is a woman dominating the STEM industry at such a young age. She's on her second company right now and data and AI for good. Yeah. And that's like the future and that's where, you know, the probably going to be the dominating technology coming in the next 10, 15 years and she's already at the helm of it. And I'm more excited to have interviewed her then maybe about the topic just cause like I'm excited to see what she can do in the future.
Becca: She's going to make a big impact on the planet. She, she already is, but she's gonna make really big impacts. So, yeah.
Host: And I guess from your, from your visit out to Singularity or do you have other, other podcasts planned, maybe something on blockchain or something?
Ryan: Yeah, we are. Blockchain episode fell through. We did get a little bit into it with Tom Friend, we'll say, but he, he was so passionate and so like educated on it that, you know, we try to slow him down and yeah, that's definitely something we need to do is like a block chain 101 episode because it is kind of like a really vague idea that's kind of hard to explain and process and we have a hard time understanding it sometimes. So definitely that would be something we want to help our viewers unders or listeners understand as well. So trust me, that's, that's on the list of ideas.
Kevin: We do have an episode, one more episode from singularity to coming up with the CEO of Upwork. who was a Silicon Valley guy back in the PayPal and all that those days. So really cool guy. I got to sit down and talk with him about the future of work play more than anything else. So Upwork is a, what do you, freelance platform online like one of the largest and one of the largest in the world. And he has really great insights about what the future of the workforce is going to be like and how we need to adapt and how Upwork is helping the workforce adapt as well. Yeah. So
Host: Well you guys really get into a lot. I that you actually had, didn't you have one on space recently?
Becca: We just released one on a little bit of a space topic. One of the more random, we interviewed the chief scientist, Bruce Betts from the planetary society. For those who aren't familiar with the planetary society, it's a non nonprofit crowdfunded space exploration and research company headed by the boy, bill Nye, bill Nye the science guy.
Becca: Yeah, so it's his, his company. And Bruce bets was one of the people who led on the LightSail 2 mission. I can go into all sorts of details about that, but you can listen to our episode and you might learn a little bit more about what that technology is.
Kevin: If you want to hear an interview that had absolutely no outline or plan, listen to that. Cause we literally grabbed him from off stage and interviewed him with no questions or anything, just kind of let the conversation go. And I think it was pretty funny and random because of that.
Becca: And it's still super educational as well.
Host: Well for, for if any of our members were listening and were thinking maybe they wanted to start a podcast, what, what would your, what your advice be for them to, to as a member of a member firm to get a successful podcast going?
Ryan: Yeah. And I think this answer may apply to more than just a podcast. It's really anything that you think is kind of entrepreneurial within your company or just in general is I think just taking the bull by the horns and kind of holding yourself accountable. You know, Kevin was a ringleader of this, but just him making the statement that he thought it would be a good idea kind of puts the wheels in motion. And without that kind of first step you're never gonna actually achieve anything. So, you know, we, Kevin, myself, Becca, we didn't know how a podcast recording and the whole post-production, all that stuff, that was all new to us when we started out. But it's just something you kind of learn as you go. You know, it took us a while to release our first couple of episodes and kind of master what we we're doing. We've been doing it what for two years now and we're still not mastered. So yeah, just like any new skill or hobby, you know, it takes, takes time and takes initiative and action and kind of holding yourself accountable.
Kevin: I guess from, from with inside a company, if we want to look at that mind frame, if you have an idea, I think in any successful company you're going to have leaders that support most ideas. And I think, yeah, like Ryan said, the biggest thing is speaking out, expressing your idea and then following through with it as Ryan said. But I think like the biggest thing was I spoke out in a meeting and there are leaders in that meeting that were willing to be like, you know what, let's run with this. We'll give you five hours a week, let's see what you can do. And since then, iteration after iteration, we've grown to have, you know, a larger budget but also make sure that whatever it is you're doing is something that you love. And I know that sounds kind of cliche, but one thing that we found is we're full time engineers.
Kevin: So we work 40 plus hours a week doing engineering work or Becca with business development. And this is something we have to do on the side. And it's really hard to put in the extra hours when it's not something you enjoy. So you have to make sure you enjoy it first if you're really gonna be successful in it.
Becca: I think just jumping off of things that they both said, we're really fortunate that there is leadership within Black & Veatch that supports innovation. They see the value in what we're doing here. And we feel really fortunate that there are leaders here that were willing to take a chance on us and help us progress through this whole project and see where it could go. So we're really thankful for that. And then in addition, yeah, the passion is super important. And then also just finding a voice that's different than what is out there now.
Becca: We think that we had a, and we still do believe that we have a different perspective than anybody else out there on the podcast platform. And we have a voice and we have things to say and we're hoping that we're teaching people and they're learning and also just give, giving people a better perspective on what our industry is about and the kind of impacts we're wanting to make as well. Yeah.
Ryan: And one last thing I would just add to that is, one thing I've noticed talking to a lot of these interviewees is most companies are passionate about kind of motivating and giving ownership to young employees. Most companies have a STEM related kind of program. And so I think you know, don't be afraid to kind of speak out and speak your idea. Like we've kind of been saying so far. Yeah.
Host: Yeah. And from, you know, being in the industry, writing about the industry for the last 12 years, I mean, one of the big issues is how do you motivate your younger employees, you know, the, the baby boomers don't understand the millennials sort of thing. And this seems to be a an example of a way of doing it.
Becca: 100%. Yeah. I think in general, us in the millennial generation are really motivated by kind of like a greater calling. I don't come to work everyday because I know I'm going to be sitting in responding to emails or doing calculations. It's because I know that I'm coming to work and I'm contributing to a better society, a better community, a better infrastructure, so that we as a community can live a healthier, more comfortable life. And I think that this is just another outlet for us to discuss that and try and get that out into the world a little bit more.
Host: Well, great. Well that, that, that I think you've guys have covered the gamut here. So I'm, I really appreciate your coming on and I urge our our listeners to tune into the Close of Business podcast. You guys are on a Spotify, right?
Ryan: Yeah. Spotify, Apple podcasts, any, any really podcast forum.
Ryan: Yeah. The best way just to look up whatever you listen to on podcast closed the business and you'll find us. And hopefully you enjoy the episodes. And if you got questions or comments reply to us. But otherwise you can email us to that. cobpodcast@gmail.com. Awesome.
Host: Well, thank you.
 

An Interview with Rep. Bruce Westerman, P.E.

Engineering Influence welcomed Rep. Bruce Westerman (Arkansas-4) to the program to discuss his career in engineering and in Congress.
Transcript:
Host: Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast from the American Council of Engineering Companies. It's a pleasure to welcome Congressman Bruce Westerman to the show. Congressman Westerman hails from Hot Springs, Arkansas and represents the state's fourth congressional district in the House of Representatives. He currently serves on the Natural Resources Committee and as Ranking Member on the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House. Congressman Westerman graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor of science degree in biological and agricultural engineering. He is also a graduate of Yale University earning a master of forestry service degree or I guess master of forestry degree forestry. Yeah. which makes him doubly unique in Congress. He's not only an engineer, but he's also a Forester of which there are not many serving in the house right now. Pretty much just yourself, I believe. Just one. Thank you very much for coming onto the program.
Rep. Westerman:  Jeff, it's great to be with you and a real honor to get to be on an ACEC podcast and talk about engineering and how that's benefited me with my service in Congress. You know, I had a nearly a two and a half decade career in engineering before I came to Congress and really enjoyed that. I always tell people I like my job in Congress, but I could go back in and be an engineer tomorrow and be perfectly content.
Host:  Actually, I was here when you spoke to members of our senior executive Institute class last month here in DC about your background in engineering and how you've applied that to your work in Congress. And I think you made the comment of pretty much saying that, you know, members come up to you because you're an engineer and expect you to have answers on just about anything related to engineering. How has your professional work in the field of engineering helped you in your roles, both in your committee work and then also in the general work that you do as a member? And I believe you're also on the science committee previously how has that impacted your ability to be an effective Member?
Rep. Westerman: Being an engineer in Congress is you know, it's a, it's a small group of us that are up here. There's not many engineers and like we already said, there's only one Forester in the, in the House. So if you've got a particular area of expertise, people really want to seek that out, especially your, your colleagues because you know, they, they generally feel like they can trust you if you want to give them, give them information. But also being an engineer probably has some drawbacks because of things like our code of professional conduct where we're not expected or we're expected not to comment on things we don't have expertise in, whereas a member of Congress, you're expected to comment on everything. So I after my freshman term, I got voted the quietest member of our freshman class, and I always told them this because you've got two ears to listen and one mouth to speak with.
Rep. Westerman: So I'll try to try to be measured in what I say and try to be accurate in what I say. And of course Congress touches, touches everything from foreign policy to healthcare tax policy. And you really have to study and read a lot just to stay on top of the issues. But when those things come along, that engineering directly impacts it's great to have some history and background and the, the education and experience to be able to make pertinent comments on those those issues and add to the conversation. But I'll get asked to speak to a lot of engineering students around the country and I'll always tell them that the thing they probably don't realize now, but they'll will realize someday is that engineering is, is really glorified problem solving. You're learning a lot of science, a lot of math.
Rep. Westerman: You're getting all the tools in the toolbox to go out and solve problems. But what you really learn going through an engineering curriculum and what you learned doing engineering on the job is how to analyze issues, define the problem, come up with a plan implement that plan and solve a problem. That's beneficial. Whether you're in Congress, whether you're working in a corporation, working in your own business or whatever you do. Those problem solving abilities are very valuable to have. And I think that's the best thing that engineering gave me and prepared me for to come here and serve in Congress.
Host: That's really interesting point because one of the things that we talk about at ACEC and we're going to be doing a lot more with a new strategic plan that we just adopted on the role of engineering in society and engineer's not just as math side, the science side, but also the problem solving, the trusted advisor to clients of looking at a challenge and finding ways to innovative ways to solve those challenges and, and to apply their background and experience to, to those challenges. So that's a really interesting point. I do want to bring up the forestry side of things cause I'm a Penn State grad. We had a forestry program at Penn State. Not exactly Yale as far as, in terms of school, but I wanted to ask the question of how you got into and interested in forestry and where that kinda stems from.
Rep. Westerman: Yeah, it's kind of a unique combination, I guess having an undergraduate in engineering and a graduate degree in forestry. But I grew up in, in Arkansas, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where I still live today, beautiful area, lots of national forest, a lot of private forest. And the career that I had for two decades was working for an ACEC member engineering firm. And we specialize in the forest products area. So when people asked me about my engineering career, I basically say that if there's some process that takes a tree and make something out of it, then I got the opportunity to design one of those facilities during my career. So getting a forestry degree was very natural and beneficial in the the business that I was in because you always started with what's the resource, what, what resources available and, and what's the most valuable product we can make out of that resource and what kind of equipment and machinery best fits the resource to convert that resource into a product that can be sold in the marketplace. And plus, I've always loved the outdoors.
Rep. Westerman: My Sunday School teacher was a world war II veteran. He, he flew in the bloody 100th bomb bombing squadron and he was just a fantastic guy, but he was, he was in the first forestry graduating class at the university of Arkansas at Monticello where our forestry school is. And I think Mr. Colepepper inspired a love for the forest and the outdoors and always wanted to go to graduate school. So it just, it worked out very well from a career and a personal goal standpoint to go study about trees. And another example of how being here in Congress and being the only, only person in the house where a forestry education and background, I work a lot on forest policy. And you know, the federal government owns a 193 million acres of timberland that's just in the Forest Service, but you throw in the BLM and the park service and you're between 250 and 300 million acres of public forest land.
Rep. Westerman: You know, today we're seeing the extreme forest fires in California and there's a lot of work that could be just be done just on the forestry side. And I'm really excited about it because forests are the link between clean air and clean water, which gets into a lot of the things that we as engineers work on. And you know, forests are the natural carbon sequesters. They're the most - good forest trees, the most pragmatic approach we can have to clean environment. And it's the best offensive tool that we've got. So I'm doing a lot of work in the forestry side of things here in Congress. And you know, one thing that we're really looking at is this new concept of mass timber and it's a new building system that's been done in Europe for quite some time, but we can now build buildings up to 18 stories tall.
Rep. Westerman: At my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, they just completed two five story mass timber dormitories. They had already built a mass timber library storage building. So it, it does a lot of, lot of things for you. Number one, it uses you can use locally sourced materials. These materials. Wood is on a dry basis, is 45 to 50% carbon, so it creates a huge carbon sink. It's a great insulating product, so you can build these buildings where they're sustainable and they don't use as much energy to operate and maintain. So a lot of positives with things like, wood, but then there's a lot of more research that can be done. We could use wood as feed stocks for chemicals. That's good feedstock for nanoparticles. I just saw something the other day where they've come up with a nano material made from wood cellulous that can be put into concrete that reduces the amount of Portland Cement and actually increases the strength and durability of the, of concrete. So the, I think the sky's the limit on what we can do with wood, which is a good renewable resource. And again, it, it's the lungs of the earth and the kidneys of the earth that cleans the air and cleans the water.
Host:  And that's really an interesting point. And actually we covered the mass timber issue in our most recent private industry brief that Erin McLaughlin in our office puts together. And again, that was the change in December of 2019. The ICC loosened the restrictions to allow buildings up to 18 stories in height effective in 2021 compared to the limit of six stories and commercial structures currently. So that's, that's an interesting, that's an interesting nexus between the forestry side and the engineering side.
Rep. Westerman: As a result of those projects they're in, in Northwest Arkansas on the University of Arkansas campus, a company just up the road, Walmart, announced they're building a new corporate headquarters. Now you think about you know, the largest company in the world building a corporate headquarters, 15,000 people, there'll be housing. So it'll be like a small college campus. I think they told me three and a half million square feet, but they're going to build the whole facility out of Southern Pine mass timber grown and manufactured in Arkansas. So that's a great story to tell, not only from the environmental stewardship side, but these local economies for timber has grown or in rural areas. And it's a, it's a good story about how we can help the autonomy in rural areas and do something good for the environment at the same time. And there's a lot of other, I've been told that Microsoft, Adidas I think Google, there's a lot of major corporations that are looking to use more of this mass timber in there Buildings.
Host: You know, buildings like that would fit in perfectly in Seattle and, and a lot of the Pacific Northwest especially. I do want to stay with the whole idea of economic development, but shifting over to infrastructure. You serve as the Ranking Member on the Water Subcommittee and of course WRDA is probably the most, the big bill that subcommittee is going to be working on for the Congress. That's a critical bill for our ports, harbors, inland waterways, locks, dams, just all of that, not just the, the seaside ports like Charleston or Savannah, but also the interior - moving goods around the country. Now with a lot of the members who listen to the podcast, they're getting a lot of their news from CNN. They're getting it from Fox and they're not hearing everything that's going on. You know, at the granular level. Where does the WRDA bill stand right now and where do you see when you see as the prospects of getting that through?
Rep. Westerman: So we've got a good track record going on WRDA and we certainly don't want to disrupt that. I believe we've the past six years or maybe eight years, we've got a WRDA bill through Congress. I know the whole time that I've been here, we've got WRDA bills passed on a two year cycle and there seems to be bipartisan support to get a WRDA bill out next year. And I will say serving on T&I, and actually being the ranking member on water and environment subcommittee. I was very fortunate in this Congress, which seems to be highly partisan with, you know, the impeachment issues and everything else going on. We've got a pretty good track record so far on the water and environment subcommittee. We just got a bill passed off the floor to use the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund to actually develop and improve harbors as it was set in place to do you know, nearly, you know, nine to $10 billion in that fund.
Rep. Westerman: But it wasn't getting used to maintain harbors and it was put strictly put in place for that purpose. So I'm glad to see we pass it off the House Floor in a bipartisan manner. I hope the Senate will take it up and get that signed into law. We also just out of Committee this week we passed the the, the loan fund for wastewater systems. And I think that's a great opportunity to go in and you know, have the funding mechanisms so that cities can, can borrow the money to repair these wastewater systems, which the, I believe it was American Society of Civil Engineers gave our wastewater infrastructure a D plus grade. And I know as I travel around in my district there's a lot of work that needs to be done on both wastewater.
Rep. Westerman: And potable water system. So we're, we're getting bills passed out of committee off the floor. Those, you know, it doesn't usually make Fox or CNN when you pass a water bill out of the House, but it makes a lot of difference across the country. And I feel very fortunate to be working on that. I'm really looking forward to working with the, the Subcommittee Chairman Grace Napalitano from California, Peter DeFazio, now the Democratic Chairman, and then Sam Graves who is the Ranking Member. We've got a commitment to, to get this word of bill done. And as you mentioned, it's very important to many parts of the country. You know, our navigable waterways took a beating in the flooding this past past spring and summer in my district and in many other places in the country. We've got a lot of work to do on that.
Rep. Westerman: There's a lot of work that needs to be done on again ports and harbors deepening channels and that sort of thing. So there's, there's no end of, of opportunities and good things that we can spend money on that are, that are good for the country. And I think part of the reason we have a federal government, you know, provide for the common defense and, and take care of interstate transportation systems and that's what T&I does. So those are the things we should be prioritizing and putting our funds towards because it helps grow the economy and and helps, you know, the country grow, which helps us be able to provide nice things and, and people to have jobs and find, make their own way through life. So excited about what we're doing on the, on the water subcommittee.
Host: And then I guess just to kind of wrap it up, I mean it, with everything going on in Washington, you know, it's so dominated the headlines by intrigue and pretty much inside the beltway, kind of partisan squabbles because it, you know, gets ratings. But you know, for your constituents and for members in the engineering profession out there who are listening and saying, okay, what's Congress doing? I mean, what, what message would you leave them with? As far as what Washington is doing and, and how things are, are looking at the end of the year and may shape up for for 2020?
Rep. Westerman: Well, right now I would, I wouldn't give Congress a very good grade on what we're doing. I mean, we're operating under a Continuing Resolution, which is been a huge pet peeve of mine since I've got here. If there's, if there's one thing I would, if I could change it and I've worked hard to try to change it that's to get us back to what I call regular order, where we do appropriation bills. We debate those bills in the open, we offer amendments on the floor, pass all 12 of them out of the House. And if the Senate would take those up and go through the same process, we know our fiscal year ends on September 30th every year. And we need a new budget by then. We know the timeline, we know what needs to be done. We're just not getting it done.
Rep. Westerman:  And that causes all kinds of problems. When you look at, we don't even have a Defense Authorization bill done this year. And, and that's one of the primary reasons to have a federal government is provide for the common defense. If, if we can't get that done, if we can't get a budget done we really should be ashamed of the job that we're doing here. Now we can talk about some positive things on T&I. There's some small things that we agree on and they're getting done. And in the big picture, the politics are getting way too much in the way. And with the 2020 presidential election coming up with all the talk about impeachment it's really taken the focus off for the job of Congress. We've still got a huge, huge issue with healthcare in this country.
Rep. Westerman: We've got huge issues with immigration we need to be addressing. But there are a lot of us that are working on those policies and we've got bills drafted and we're ready to go. But you just can't get it in committee. You can't get time on the floor. The USMCA, a trade agreement that would be great for our country has got bipartisan support. You know, Mexico is now our largest trading partner. So you'd have your first and second largest trading partners with a new agreement that would benefit farmers, benefit the whole country. And we can't get it on the floor for a vote. It could've passed two months ago with bipartisan support. So that's frustrating. But again, engineers are problem solvers and I keep looking at it, you know, how can I make a difference? How can we change this?
Rep. Westerman: And it, a lot of times it's a slow change. And a lot of times it takes changes in leadership. It takes changes in which party is in control. But I see light at the end of the tunnel and you know, in on the positive side of things is the economy's doing quite well. We could do, we could be doing better and we see pathways to make that happen and I want to continue working on that and using hopefully what I learned studying engineering and doing engineering for a couple of decades and applying that here in the United States House of Representatives.
Host: Well, Congressman, thank you very much. There's still a lot of work to do, but like you said, engineers are problem solvers and you're going to be here to help solve those problems. So really appreciate your time this morning and coming on the show and, and, and hope to have you on the future. And I guess today you have some votes and then you're out, right? The this is, this is the end of the week legislatively.
Rep. Westerman: Yeah. This is a fly out day. It's a you know, I love my job, but the happiest day of the week are when I'm heading back to Arkansas, back to the real world. And the people I grew up with, the people I love and the people I get to represent here in this this great job in the U S so we do have a vote today actually a vote on the impeachment inquiry. So I wish we were voting on a WRDA bill or something like that, but it is what it is. And you know, I look forward to continuing to work is a lot of the things that people don't see that are here in DC is that when most members of Congress are back in our districts, we're working as much there as we are up here in DC. It's a different kind of work. And with, I've got a large rural district, so I spend a lot of time on the road, but always enjoy getting back.
Host: Well, Congressman Bruce Westerman, thank you very much for being on the show. Again, this has been another episode of Engineering Influence from the American Council of Engineering Companies.
 

2019 ACEC Community Service Award Recipient Tricia Ruby of Ruby + Associates

Engineering Influence welcomed Tricia Ruby of Ruby + Associates to the show to talk about her extensive community service work in the Detroit, Michigan area. Tricia was a recipient of a 2019 ACEC Community Service Award, which she received at the 2019 Annual Fall Conference in Chicago.