Engineering Influence from ACEC
Episodes
Friday Aug 14, 2020
Preview of ACEC‘s New Project Management Course
Friday Aug 14, 2020
Friday Aug 14, 2020
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/
Friday Jun 26, 2020
The Buildings We Live and Work In: ACEC Research Institute Panel Discussion
Friday Jun 26, 2020
Friday Jun 26, 2020
This is the second of three roundtables on the future of engineering presented by the ACEC Research Institute. www.acecresearchinstitute.org
The world today is full of extraordinary volatility, yet the engineering industry has risen to the challenge. Uniquely positioned at the forefront of designing buildings for work and home – engineers are solving for the new normal and exploring what is needed for commercial, high-rise, healthcare, and mixed-use buildings of the future. How do we design them? How do we rehab or retrofit them? What is really needed for the future when designing work and living spaces in this new paradigm. Join this exciting panel discussion that explores the future of the buildings we live and work in.
Panelists:
• Dino DeFeo, Managing Partner, AKF
• Peter DiMaggio, Co-CEO, Thornton Tomasetti
• Arathi Gowda, Associate Director, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
• Kate Wittels, Partner, HR&A Advisors
• Moderator: Joseph Bates, ACEC Research Institute
Transcript:
Daphne Bryant:
Welcome to our second roundtable in this series, The Future of Engineering. A big thank you to our donors who have made this session possible. We have a great group of thought leaders here today that are going to share their insights and expertise with us on the future of buildings, where we live and work now without further ado. It's my pleasure to introduce two of my colleagues at the ACEC Research Institute, Joe Bates, who will serve as our moderator for today's session and Kevin McMahon, who will be monitoring the chat box and fielding your questions during the session, Joe, it's all yours.
Joe Bates:
Thank you very much, Daphne, and thank you all for joining us today. First, I'd like to introduce you all to each of our panelists. We have Dino DeFeo, who is managing partner at AKF. Dino is a respected and admired leader whose market knowledge and passionate commitment to clients have formed the foundation of a 25 year career. He understands the importance of working as an integral part of a design collective with the express goal of realizing the direct client's vision. We also have with us, Peter DiMaggio, co-CEO of Thornton Tomasetti. Peter is responsible for defining, articulating and driving the firm's strategic vision. In addition to leading the development and execution of the overall business plan, he directs key strategic initiatives, such as identifying new markets and merger and acquisition opportunities, as well as instituting mentorship and professional development programs. I'd also like to welcome Arathi Gowda, who is Associate Director of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Arathi is a team leader for the company's Chicago's performance design group charged with researching new technologies and recommending integrated environmental design solutions that are substantiated with computer simulation for SOM project teams worldwide.
Joe Bates:
And finally, I'd like to welcome Kate Wittels, who is a Partner at HR&A Advisors. Kate specializes on the future of work and how to best shape places, train people and deliver infrastructure to make today's cities ready for tomorrow's opportunities. She creates strategic plans, public private partnerships, policies, and programs to guide governments, developers, and businesses on growing tech and innovation ecosystems in cities around the world. Thank you all very much for joining us today. I'm going to jump right into our questions. It's obviously no surprise that we're living through this pandemic and it's completely changed the way that we live and work. I think we have all within a blink of an eye, had to create new ways of working and communicating and, and some of the participants and viewers who were with us during the pregame show might have heard us talking about some of those challenges we live with. So my first question, I'd like Pete, to start out with Pete, are we going to see a fundamental shift in where we work in the future?
Peter DiMaggio:
I do. I think we're going to see a fundamental shift. What I think is less clear is what that shift actually looks like. Let me give you my example on this right before Kobe, we have about 1500 people and the large majority of them were working in the office. COVID hits. We send as many people as we can almost close to 1500 to work remotely. And early on, it really looked like as we were learning from this, that we were going to have this situation where more and more people want to work remotely. That was an early indicator. What we're seeing now actually is a lot of people want to be back in the office, whether it's for that social interaction, their ability to be more effective. And I think in the last two or three weeks, and this is how uncertain this future is, what we're getting from our employees is they want flexibility, which is a really interesting challenge.
Peter DiMaggio:
They don't want to be full time at home and they don't want to be full time in the office. And if I had to make a guess, I would think that that is going to be something that stays with us where people want that ability to do some time at home and some time in the office. And it's a really big challenge, right? It's a challenge to get people really effective in the office. It's also a challenge to get them really effective at home, but just think of what this means from an IT point of view, right? How many different computer systems do you have? Do you have monitors? Do you need the right working environment, both at home and in the office? The second challenge that comes from that is again, early on, it's really interesting to see how things progress over the last month.
Peter DiMaggio:
Early on, I think the immediate reaction was we're probably going to need less for real estate for our entire office structure because clearly people want to be at home. Now, all of a sudden we're saying, but if they want to be partially at home and partially in the office, you still need less real estate or do you just need different real estate? So the simple answer to your question is, yes, I think you'll see a fundamental shift, a much more complex question to ask is what do we think this is going to look like? And if you really want to challenge the group, I think it's going to look very different in suburban areas than it may look in urban areas due to the challenge of public transportation. So are people able to do both of these and still use public transportation to get to their office?
Joe Bates:
Kate Pete mentioned public transit. What do you think is going to happen with public transit and you're in New York city. So how's that going to affect people that are working and living in New York city?
Kate Wittels:
Yeah. I mean, it's a big, it's a big unknown about transit, but I think as Pete was starting talking about the mood changes so quickly, if you ask people a month ago, six weeks ago, you get on the subway? No. But if you asked me last week or yesterday and you're starting to hear stories and be like, I want, I'm taking the subway. It's clean, it's the cleanest it's ever been. And so I think to what Pete was saying is that there's going to be this half in half out experience and we're going to figure out how we best travel to the places. And it's really about, what's the role of the physical office in how we work and that's really what we need to figure out. And that will change how offices are laid out, but it used to be that we had to produce everything in the office.
Kate Wittels:
And now we're realizing that somethings that we can produce it's more effective to produce it, the knowledge economy stuff in our home, and maybe having recurring meetings in our homes, but the culture, brand, desire for you know, interaction. And I think as an amenity to employees for retention and attraction, the office will play a role in that sense. And so I think it's, it's really thinking through what the role of the office is going to play for businesses. And then what does that mean for neighborhoods? And then what does that mean for the need for transit? Cause maybe the demand will be actually less or only half of us are going in half at a time.
Joe Bates:
It feels almost like we've let the genie out of the bottle here with having people working from home that in the past, there was a lot of pushback from many companies that were saying, Hey, we don't want you working from home. And now everyone was forced to do it. And somehow they're making it work. So I don't know, Arathi, do you, what do you think about that? You know, have we just let the genie out of the bottle, not going to be able to put it back in?
Arathi Gowda:
I think so in a lot of ways, and I don't think it's necessarily about trust even though maybe sometimes that was an issue. I think it was about collaboration and so engineering, architecture, planning, we're very collaborative disciplines. And so there was always this idea that you had to have the groupthink in the office. And I think obviously now as Kate was mentioning some of the things that are a little less efficient remotely, but people are seeing that actually we can be very collaborative in our home environment. And I think this is actually very positive because we've been talking about that for a long time. There's an emissions reduction, there's a positive, personal benefit. There's a lot of good things that are happening or silver linings as a result of this. But we almost needed to have the push. And I think that does speak a little bit to what Peter was saying about, there's a little bit of a multiplicity of futures, but let's face it. We're a complex society and we'll, we'll keep going the way we were going if it's working and this has forced us to maybe shift faster. And I think in a good way as we're all seeing there's some benefits. I don't think we're going to go Back to the way we were.
Joe Bates:
Dino, any thoughts on this?
Dino DeFeo:
I think everybody has some good points. You know, you start thinking about what is the role of the office and in our environments. And you know, it has a huge impact on the culture of your firm, your interactions in the office, how you work with one another, your collaboration, but nowadays with the tools you have online and the collaboration that you can do online, it will change the way we work. And you will start seeing some more decentralized offices in headquarters might not be the size they used to be anymore, but you still might need the office space for more of a a collaboration area or a conference center, you'll see more hoteling, all the things that we've been talking about for years, this has really accelerated that.
Dino DeFeo:
And I think it's going to continue to accelerate and things are going to be like this until there is a vaccine. I mean, a lot of people won't be comfortable coming back to the office until that's the case. So until then, you know, we're still going to be experimenting with the conditions that we're in and seeing how things work and what doesn't work.
Joe Bates:
So Dino, I have one thought on that sort of a follow-up question for you, maybe dive a little bit more deeply into this issue of there's this near term, of course, but and then let's, let's assume we're going to have a vaccine and, and everybody is able to return to some level of normalcy, but what's the long-term implication on how buildings commercial buildings will look in the future. This pandemic will, I think be fresh in everyone's memory for a generation at least to come. And so what kind of design considerations will we need to make in terms of health and safety, you know, cleaning the offices, elevators, things of that nature?
Dino DeFeo:
Well, I mean, you know, we're an MEP firm, so, you know, I could just stick to some of the things that we've been dealing with in, with our clients on the MEP side, you're starting to look at buildings that are going to be much more robust in engineering infrastructure. We've spent a lot of time looking at the energy efficiency of buildings and we're going to start spending more time looking at the wellbeing of the occupants of the building. And there's going to be a push and pull there. There's still the energy codes we're going to have to comply with, but a lot of things that we'll have to do to make people feel comfortable with coming back post pandemic and let's keep in mind, this is not the only pandemic we've been through.
Dino DeFeo:
This is the worst by far, but we've had SARS and a number of others. And every couple of years, it seems like there's something else that we're talking about. So the infrastructures of these buildings will have to be much more robust, much more flexible, you know, greater ventilation rates, greater air changes, higher humidity because we're finding that, you know, humidification is great for the wellbeing of the person, regardless of during pandemic or not. So all of these things impact the energy efficiency of a building. So we will try and we will need to figure out how do we balance the wellbeing of the people within the building, and yet still comply with the energy efficiency mandates that are being required of us. So that's kind of where we're going to, we're going to have to be whether it's UV lights that we're adding into systems, greater filtration, decentralized systems, you know, there's going to be a number of challenges on you in the engineering world in order to make people feel more comfortable with how buildings are performing and how they're protecting the people within the building.
Joe Bates:
Arathi, what about the elevators? We were talking about that before we went live here, are we going to have, you know, elevators that are 10 times the size as they are now? Or are we, how are we going to move thousands of people up and down? You know, these high rise buildings?
Arathi Gowda:
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there might be some things even to Dino's point, there, there are things in the market that are already stacking elevators and others that increased capacity. But I think, you know, we haven't been able to always sell those on projects. So I think what's going to happen is these things that were harder sells before are going to become better or easier sells now. So this nexus of energy and wellness, particularly to elevators, you know, I think it's, it's touchless, it's called button sensoring, it's stacked elevators. I think there's also maybe a reality of a public health response. So by nature, these are more confined spaces. And what would be more like Asia, you know, look to our Asian friends and say, they're very used to masks. It's not an issue for them to wear masks or wear gloves.
Arathi Gowda:
Because some of those things can't be solved strictly with social distancing, but I do think it's a very important time. And even in the environmental movement, it's always been planet first and not people. And there's been a real problem with messaging with that, that mentality, because of course we know the eight ball is energy efficiency, carbon reduction, but until we connect that to stories that people can relate to, then it's very hard to change hearts and minds. And I think that this piece of wellness it's very relatable, people can understand. So I think there are going to be some very important conversations in the engineering community about how we can do the things we've been even talking about humidity for years and advanced filtration. And we're building on that with code policy and rating systems. These are not always things that our clients opt into. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to be asked to do those things more consistently have the cost of it dropped so that it can become more ubiquitous in the market, which is essentially what we want.
Kate Wittels:
I think what's interesting about this right now is this is an opportunity for building owners to become really creative and force them to really differentiate themselves and try the new systems that they we've been talking about and pushing for them. Because now buildings aren't just competing with other commercial buildings in their own sub market. They're competing with other sub markets. They're competing with residential products, they're competing with retail products. People are working out of restaurants now. And so I think this is a real interesting opportunity for what the building will actually offer in the long run to make companies want to continue to pay rent and to make employees want to come back in. I mean, you can offer up that you're going to have better air in your office, then you are in your home for example, or sound quality or other things. That's, that's where the building would have the opportunity to really keep, keep their asset as it is.
Peter DiMaggio:
I think that's such an important point. I, you know, as Kate was talking, it struck a nerve. If you think back to September 11th to 9/11 when, when that event occurred the first response was we're never going to build high rise buildings again, right? People aren't going to. And so of course that's not what happened, right? So it took a while. And then people started talking about how do we address this issue? And then people got creative and then people started to figure out how to build security. And, and one of the questions I just saw in the chat - what happens to existing buildings that aren't ready? You know, this was a really good example. People upgraded those buildings, they invested in them, and then they use that to try to draw tenants back in. And the big difference I see now is we're only a few months into this and already you have some of the smartest people on the planet talking about how do we solve this issue and get back to work.
Peter DiMaggio:
And to me, that's one of the biggest differences. It took us a long time after 9/11 to say, we're going to go back into a high rise building. How do we address this now? We're saying, and, and again, look, the first month of COVID people were staying in the office is that nobody's ever going to go back when, and I though the speed at which the design community has started to attack this problem to me is a really positive thing. And so I think, you know, to the point of how much is it going to cost and what are people going to do if groups like everybody on the phone, right? Even people listening in are already starting to try to solve this. I'm really excited to see where this ends up because we're not stuck on the problem. We're already talking about the solutions.
Dino DeFeo:
This is going to be a balance. I mean, there's going to be so many different solutions that are kind of come out of this to your point. I mean, there are a number of different ways to tackle this and whether it's you know, office space, that's spread out a little bit more, you're going to have social distancing within the office. You're going to need that office space to, in order to keep people. I mean, we used to talk about densification. We did a tremendous amount of studies about how many people we can put on a floor. You're not going to have that anymore. That's not really going to want to be what people want to do. So office space is going to be a necessity a long time. It's not going away. So it's a matter of, I guess the question came in. What do you do with the older building stock? We're going to have to figure out how to convert those buildings. So people feel comfortable again, just like after 9/11, just like after Sandy, you know, things are going to be different, but things will be, you know, we'll still need those that office space.
Joe Bates:
I want to come back to that issue and question in just a few minutes, but first Kevin, do we have any questions from the audience on the topic of the buildings that we live in our buildings that we're working in?
Kevin McMahon:
Yeah, we do. Joe. We have a couple of really good ones. The first one is about what we've been discussing. And the question is how much of the effectiveness working remotely is due to the fact that we know our colleagues. when we got put into the situation there, the audience members asking, what strategies would the panel recommend for bringing new team members into the group, collaborative culture effectively while they're working remotely?
Dino DeFeo:
I could start with that because we actually hired people pre pandemic and they started post pandemic. So it was a matter of introducing them to the people who they were going to be working with via something similar in zoom or via teams. And it's a daily and sometimes multiple times a day collaboration with them. And it's a challenge to make sure that the culture of the firm you're imparting that on new people. And we're going through something now where we're bringing EIT and interns in. So we're also working with our interns and it's again, multiple touches a day and making sure that they're, they're getting the education that, that, you know, we promise them and that they need as they go back to school. And also for the EITs that we're starting to culture and then starting to introduce the culture of our firm to them from the beginning. So you have to work with them daily, you have to make sure that they have someone who is their partner, that they can reach out to with any questions, but you have to make sure that there's a connection back to the firm consistently.
Kate Wittels:
I think, you know, we've talked about mentorship and collaboration and kind of those types of things are just going to have to happen even more so. And I think that's great, right? We, not, every firm really prioritizes mentorship and now it's going to happen and it's going to happen across offices. I think you'll actually get to know more people than you would of just the people that were within your team or on your, on your floor now. And so that's an exciting opportunity.
Peter DiMaggio:
And I think that that point that Kate has made is even more powerful if you are a very diverse spread out organization. So we have 50 offices. And so it's clearly more difficult for us when we onboard somebody now in that local office for all the challenges that come. But one of the things we've been really successful with is building a culture between offices. We've gotten very good at this kind of a call and getting to know people in the old days, what would happen is you'd be in your local office and everything would be on a voice, a conference call. And I don't know how everybody else feels, but I like it this environment so much more than the non facial conference call. And we, I think we build culture and get to know each other. So this Zoom call has been a clearly a challenge, but I think going forward, it's something we're going to use. We're talking about, you know, trying to keep the carbon footprint down, having a lot more meetings in this environment and being able to bring more people into those meetings rather than flying them from 50 places. So I think there's an opportunity to really take advantage of it.
Joe Bates:
Kevin do we have any other questions on the buildings that we work in before we move on to the buildings where we live?
Kevin McMahon:
Yeah. This is an interesting question, Joe. It's about the cost of, of the existing buildings in many cities that require retrofitting. And a lot of these retrofits may become too expensive and cost prohibitive. What will happen to these buildings?
Joe Bates:
Arathi? Do you have any thoughts on that one to start us out with?
Arathi Gowda:
I think we were talking about it or touching on it a little bit or, but I think obviously there's a lot of fun costs and we know the real estate market is, I mean, this is a, and one of the biggest financial engines and hard to move slow to move and change, but that makes, I think all of us believe that no, we are not going to abandon these, which is a good thing from a carbon sink perspective. And I think the technology is all there. And many people touched on that already in the panel, but there are a multitude of retrofits that are already starting to happen. I think at som we have a getting back to work plan. I'm sure Kate, you know, Peter has similar words, you know, we're looking at different things. How do we space out?
Arathi Gowda:
How do we have shifts? How do we have advanced filtration? How do we have flush out? How do we have twice daily cleaning? And you know, again, those aren't cost prohibitive measures for people to undertake. It's not talking about a whole a to upgrade or change. It's about how much extra outside air can we bring into this space. So and when we can in a certain space how do we socially distance more you know, and think about those other, other issues. So I think people are being very flexible, which is quite interesting as we get back into this space. And again, thinking, not build new, but how do we, how do we work with what we have, which is, is really important.
Dino DeFeo:
Yeah, the solutions are not a one size fits all. You're going to have, you know, air handler, retrofits
Speaker 6:
And upgrades that are going to be relatively inexpensive and some that are going to be very expensive to do. But, you know, let's be honest. The building stock is very expensive. Leases are very expensive. And if in order to attract people and charge the leases that you're charging, you're going to have to ensure that the occupants of the building are safe. So it's going to be probably something that is going to be demanded of landlords in order to make their building stock of value. So I think there's going to be ways to afford it. And as technology gets more affordable, it's going to be easier and easier to do.
Kate Wittels:
I also think there's going to be a lot of adaptive reuse. I mean, we're going to see, we were seeing a mix of uses that before this people wanting to live closer to where they work, people wanting to have more options. And so for some buildings that can be adapted really just because, and they can't be easily upgraded. They're going to turn into residential or they're going to turn into some other function. And that's just how we're going to continue on to live.
Joe Bates:
So what I'm hearing is we're gonna be doing a lot of retrofitting and not, not whole scale demolition of city blocks and making new buildings. It's just too expensive. I'd like to now turn to the next topic that we're going to discuss, which is the buildings in which we live, obviously we've started working from home, but what kind of w what kind of considerations are we going to have when it, when it comes to where people are living, making those buildings more healthy, especially multi-dwelling buildings RFP, do you have some thoughts on that one?
Arathi Gowda:
I think this is again, it's a, always listening for the glass is half full, but I think this is again, another opportunity in a market that's been really tough. So, I mean, when we look at the history, the historic trends of energy efficiency residential is the lowest in this country and globally even in multifamily housing. And why has the lowest energy efficiency? Well, it follows the cost. It's the lowest cost per square foot. And I think of course, right now everyone's rethinking. I mean, I personally am rethinking, why did I get that parking space when I do own a car, because I'm a greenie, why didn't I get the balcony instead? But it was resale value, right? And so those of us in cities are thinking about options like that. But I think people, again are thinking more about space gardens, other features that had people historically in the suburbs.
Arathi Gowda:
But I think it will again, drive up what the cost per square foot is that people are willing to invest. And what they're willing to invest in, which I think is very positive because they've gotten to this is the biggest investment of most Americans' lives. And it's very, very commodified in a way that's not good for health and it's not good for carbon either. So again, looking at this health and energy carbon nexus I think there's a lot that people are rethinking now. And I don't think that it's going to mean you know, an exited to the suburbs. It might be, people are looking at different kinds of cities where they can afford a little bit more space. It might be, again, it's not the parking spot anymore. It's something else. Or maybe it is the car because now I can move around. But I think people are thinking about it in a much more nuanced way than historically just bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger space, which was the, usually the driver.
Joe Bates:
Yeah. It seems like there's been this sort of initial knee jerk reaction of we're going to get outta here or we're moving out to the country. In, in my neighborhood, I live on a mountain and the Blue Ridge West of DC and four brand new houses have gone up in the last four months. So highly unusual. What, what do the rest of you think about that? You know, is this just sort of an initial reaction that people are going to leave the cities? Or are we, are we going to adapt and how?
Peter DiMaggio:
I'll jump in on that? I think one of the most interesting things about the cities and this may be, even appear off topic, but I don't think it is, is, is how much of the cultural institutions people come back to whether it's sporting events or Broadway or restaurants or bars or whatever you can think of. In a lot of ways that has been something that has drawn lots of people into the city, right? And so if that comes back and it comes back powerfully, I think you're gonna see a lot of people stay. And then that, to my original point, if people really want to spend some time in the office, they are also going to need to be, and those offices are in an urban environment. They can't really move so far to the country, which is why I think originally when we started talking about everybody's gonna move to the country, that was a knee jerk reaction to, I can work from home.
Peter DiMaggio:
If I can work from home, I don't need to be near my office. And I think people are rethinking that because they don't want to be so isolated. So I, I think it's a combination of, do you want to spend some time in your office, which I think the answer will be yes, for most people. And can we get these cultural institutions that have really, in my opinion, made our cities what they are, if we can get them up and running safely, I think you're going to see that, that draw to be in a city again, to that nine 11 quote, I think 10 years from now, we're still going to want to be in our urban environments for the same reason we want to be there now. So I think it will come back around what it looks like and how fast we get there. I'm not sure.
Dino DeFeo:
Yeah. To a, to Joe, your point about the homes being built. I've already heard a couple of stories in my area of bidding Wars for homes, which is, you know, unusual in the suburb of New York lately. I mean, we used to have that years ago, but not for quite some time. So we're starting to see that, but I, you know, I, I do, I do agree with Peter. I think you're going to start seeing people want to come back and just the, how long will that take? I mean, if we go through another pandemic, would you rather quarantine in a 500 square foot apartment without the balcony? Or would you rather quarantine in a 2,500 square foot house with a backyard? And maybe if you have a spouse who works two offices built into the house as well it's going to be a, it's going to be a little bit of a balancing act. And I think if, if you can work from the office part time, like we were talking about earlier, you might choose to move a little further away from the city, knowing that you're not doing that long commute every day. If you're doing it a couple of days a week or three days a week, you might be willing to sit on the train for longer than to, than to be close to work.
Kate Wittels:
I think this is a call for cities to work with their regional partners. There's been a long time of a us versus them, right? You want to keep the residents or the office workers on your side of the border and retain the taxes. And I think this is really now about a regional approach to to how we're going to be living. So it's not New York city. It's the New York city MSA and living in the Hudson Valley and working, you know, coming into New York city twice a week, instead of five times a week, it's all going to seem like we're all part of the same same community. And we need to work together more.
Joe Bates:
Kevin what, what questions do we have on this?
Kevin McMahon:
We have a great question that ties right into this discussion. Does the panel see more use in high rises of residential and commercial cohabitating becoming part of the same building, you know, leveraging the efficiency of elevators and heating and air conditioning systems addressing some of the panels that comment
Kate Wittels:
For, for a long time, I always was saying that office was going to become an amenity of residential and every tall office tower was going to have two floors of coworking in some sense. And you, you would subsidize that off some sort of check from your employer to work out of that for a couple of days a week, or what have you. And I think that office offering is going to be more and more offered in the residential products, especially the high rise, dense residential product. You don't have to get a bigger apartment, but you have a floor go to when you want to get away from your children.
Joe Bates:
Kate, I want to follow up with you on that one. Again, I'm, I'm sort of talking from the perspective of the DC area out in the suburbs. We have a lot of mixed use planning going on where, you know, it's required now to have retail in the bottom and apartments, condos up top. And, and the idea is that it will reduce traffic, et cetera. And it's not, you know, we're just seeing people who are, you know, they're still moving to the suburbs, but then they're working in DC and still have to commute. And there's just a lot more traffic going cross-ways every which way. You know, what are your thoughts on that?
Kate Wittels:
I think DC I mean, it's congestion, do you see as that people need to be getting out of their cars more and having more public transit options than just what the Metro is providing. Right? I think there's a example that people want to go places. We have to figure out how to get them more there, more efficiently without the congestion of single person vehicle travel.
Joe Bates:
And that's going to be a challenge, especially in the near term, at least because the CDC is saying, hey, drive, drive a solo now.
Kate Wittels:
Yeah, I think what's be interesting is bus. I think the advent of bus rapid transit and where, how we're going to be using buses differently is going to be really, really interesting.
Joe Bates:
Yeah. I saw a photo of a bus where they're, you know, they tape off various seats and the untaped seats you can sit in. So there's this weird, you know, social distancing thing going on. What do the rest of you all think on this question that Kevin proposed?
Peter DiMaggio:
I think for what it's worth from my side, I think you, you touched on one, that's absolutely critical caked in, and then you mentioned that, which is the public transportation system. And for many, many years, we said, it's going to work well, if there's a great public transportation, as far out as that goes, that's how far people will move. Right? So if the train line goes out 50 miles, people will be 50 miles out, 70 miles. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see how people respond to public transportation. The exact opposite is what's happening in our offices right now. We have 50 of them. So we have all these different kinds. The places where people drive to work are filling up very fast because they don't have to deal with that, that danger or the potential exposure. So it's an odd mix of the places where we don't have public transportation or working very well to get back in the office. I don't think that's sustainable. I think ultimately we'll figure out a way to safely transit and then, then we'll get back to where we were. But however long that takes and that's a tough challenge to, to keep the public transportation to some ways, for instance safe. That's why I think we're seeing in New York, which are very slow movement to come back to the offices.
Speaker 6:
Well, that is the issue. I mean, for, for our firm, I mean, we we've, I like all of us, we've probably sent out surveys to our staff to figure out what are some of the key drivers. And, and one of the ones that keeps coming up is public transportation. So that's why we're moving very slowly with bringing people back to New York, but our other offices are coming back much more quickly because they are suburban suburban offices for the most part they commute via or bus, or it's a little bit easier. A lot of people are in their own car. But Boston, New York, Philadelphia, where they're taking more mass transit again, it's coming back much more slowly. So we'll have to figure out how to do that safely. And and ms. Strategy is going to have to be a part of that equation.
Speaker 6:
And remember that's out of our control as office leadership, right? As, as from leadership, we know we can, we can really have pretty good control what's going on in our offices and we can work with our building management to even have pretty good control of what's going on. If we're a tenant, once you get outside of that and people control their own home environment very well. It's that piece right in the middle of that you know, Kate, you mentioned something that struck a nerve partner and you, you mentioned that on a regional level, I think we're going to have to really partner with, with the mass transit systems and the public transportation systems to, to solve this problem collectively. And I think we said it earlier, the subways have never been cleaner. I forget who mentioned it. Yeah. But you know, that's because there's not much use right now, you know, once we started having more people on the subway, so it'll be clean less frequently, there'll be more cars that are out in service at any given time.
New Speaker:
And it's going to be, again, something we're going to have to help manage, because it is a key driver to getting us to where we need to go. Yeah. I mean, there is some collectivism in here as to how we behave as a society that I think, again, it's out of our control a little bit, but I mean, not, not so much, I think individually we add up. And that's why I did say, like, if we look at our Asian friends in the beginning of this, the first question, I think how they behave in a very organized and very dense places you know, Hong Kong after SARS, they completely changed their mentality and they're in a completely different situation now. And again, it wasn't just the engineering community that responded is the public health, but it was also just the general public in terms of not having an emergency aversion to math, you know, using their elbows for buttons, if they didn't have gloves, you know, just, I think they're a little behavior modifications, as we said, that we'll all get used to.
Speaker 5:
But they do have that, you know, they've had a long mentality needed to have you know, live work half rezzy, half office towers. And you know, that wasn't necessarily a commentary like, Oh, I may about mixed use and I'll go to thing. There was a commentary about speculation in the real estate market. Like let's make sure the column spacing, the engineering can convert because we're building these cities so quickly. So I think there is something in that too. That's really it's very optimistic and it's about, you know, if we build it, people will come. And that we shouldn't, we should kind of borrow from that mentality to how do we engineer buildings that can be very flexible, you know? Kay. You had that great example too about you know, Rezi flexibility with office floors. But again, like how do we, how do we design ultimately very flexible spaces that can last a long time?
Speaker 6:
Certainly with RCI. Yeah, I was. I'm wondering if you have any specific examples you can share with us that you're aware of. You mentioned, you know, the SARS outbreak and what types of engineering changes were made, or is there anything that you, you know of that you can share with us?
Arathi Gowda:
Well, there were changes to their their wind code essentially. So they have one of the most aggressive code standards and people are following it around the world in terms of not just wins and the public realm that would blow people over, but also about contaminant control. So these are things that it's like being a good neighbor because one of the contamination points was in the vent stack of two adjacent rez buildings. So it was a plumbing stack. There was a re entry point. And so they were wondering like, it's not just a tooth, but it's also, if there's something in that vent stack going wrong, that you can contaminate amongst floors. But you know, again, it's even Peter, you had mentioned that it's, it's not just our disciplines, but there were many other responses from the public health departments, how people change their behavior. And certainly we have a very big contribution and particularly in dense environments, because there are a lot of engineering control points that could facilitate better health management
Peter DiMaggio:
Joe, to your point. I think there have been so many unbelievable advancements in fluid mechanics, which might be a strange question, but our ability to model how particulates move around and environment, and it came from the fire industry was doing work and the blast resistant design community was doing work like this ability to model really high end modeling of how people interact and how fluids interact with people really does exist today in a way that it didn't exist five years ago. So we have the capability, the question is, do we want to use it and adapt it and really go in that in that way, because I think we could really solve this problem on a technical level where at least address it in a way we couldn't previously.
Dino DeFeo:
Well, actually to that point, we are doing that already. A number of higher education institutions have reached out to talk to us about the way they use their classrooms and the placements of students with the air distribution and the air flow across those, the students in there, the people using a room so that they understand that there's a, there's a, an airflow. That's not hitting every single student. You're trying to space them out so that the separate airflows hitting separate groups of students. So you're not contaminating everybody in one shot. So you're already starting to look at the computational airflow in a, you know, in an auditorium or a classroom to see the impacts of having 10 students, 20 students, a hundred students, depending on the size of the room. So it's something that people are looking at and it's a, it's guiding their, the way they're bringing the kids back to school.
Joe Bates:
Kevin, what other questions do we have on this subject?
Kevin McMahon:
You have a question that I think impacts every business out there. It's how does the panel see the balance between densification or efficiency and hygiene? Will we be moving? We went from officers to cubes and we moved them back to offices out as the panel, see that sort of dynamic playing out?
Kate Wittels:
Well for a firm that's never had a private office. I don't see us going to private offices. So we will probably not be densifying as much anymore. And especially with a little bit of hoteling and a little bit of work from home and part time, work, home, and an office. I think it's very easy to densify and still maintain your office space or even a little bit less office space.
Peter DiMaggio:
I'll take the easy part of that question. I don't think you will see more private offices again, you know, a month and a half ago where we had older buildings, which had that we were able to get people back and then we realized, but why did they go back? Because the whole purpose of being in that office environment are at these point is to collaborate. And so I think that's the one easy one I can give you is my opinion. That's not the solution to have more people in private offices so that they can social distinction, you know, keep their air, their own environment clean. They may as well work from home at that point. So I don't know that you'll have none of them, but I don't think that's what you'll see. You're going to see people really trying to figure out how to keep their conference room safe, because that's why we go to the office.
Kate Wittels:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. It's about why are we going to the office? What are we doing at the office? Not do we need just another place to work. And it's a space spaces. They're going to be designed around those functions of collaboration and cultivating brand and selling to our clients and making employees happy and willing to, to work and stay at the company.
Arathi Gowda:
I mean, it's just you know, working at SOM we just went through a office renovation, which was quite interesting. So all of our major offices in North America are having a new office right as this was hitting, we were like, we have these beautiful spaces that we enjoy. We were all excited to go back. But I think, you know, Kate hit on this a little bit in some earlier points that you know, we all took as a value, almost less desk space and more collaborative and conferencing space. And also recognizing that it is also for us to not just be locked into our desk, only working like this, but we do a lot of you know, conferencing, more soft spaces, more areas to eat and then have more informal conversation. So, you know, Peter, your point is to how do you keep those spaces clean beyond like a, to a twice a day protocol. It's easy to do that at your desk. You know, you're just, you are wiping that, but I think it might turn into almost like a gym where you carry your towel everywhere and you wipe it down.
Arathi Gowda:
It just becomes a different office etiquette in these collaborative spaces. And we've seen that as obviously a design trend. It's a, nobody wants to see, or just always be an identified area, but everyone wants to be on the soft couch or, you know, in the sling chair in the conference room, like group thinking. So that's why people are going in and the cappuccino maker, which is far superior to anything we have at home.
Joe Bates:
Well that, that that's sort of goes to another question of those, those other shared spaces that we haven't really talked about, the kitchen, the bathroom, I was reading an article about how you can with the sort of power flushes. Now you aerosol you know, not to get too into it, but there's a health issue in the restrooms now. How do you all see addressing those communal space health issues?
Arathi Gowda:
We've started talking about that vacuum flushing, which has long been the con of the noise and it's annoying, but the aerosol is much less. We were talking about that on a recent airport. So it significantly reduces the amount of water reducing the aerosol, but for a long time, everyone was like, eh, sounds terrible, which it does, you know, but if you're in an airport and you're already used to hearing that on the plane but I think you've heard conversations. I think there's also, and again, an interesting social nexus with these conversations about gender fluidity and how do we plan? Because again, we often do our plumbing, this based on code counts. And we don't think about having more counts, you know, both for you know, for people to feel safe with gender fluidity, for mothers rooms and other things. So I think it's going to change the way we engineer and plan for these spaces to try to be not just code, but above that, you know, think about people first.
Arathi Gowda:
And how do you have, you know, an extra thing or two, and so people could be faced out, like you go into the bathroom, you don't have to be right next to someone because you just had the code minimum, you could go every other. So these are some of the things we're thinking about. And it's interesting. Cause even standards like the wells certification, or they've been asking about things like this, and now this is kinda coming up a little bit more like, how do you, how do you have more counts of these essential places to clean?
Dino DeFeo:
Yeah. I mean, you touched on it. Code was always the code minimum. And you know, when you're designing a building, you're looking at what is, what do I need to do to meet code? I think we're, we're going, we're getting to a place where we're going far beyond what code requires and what is appropriate now.
Kevin McMahon:
So we have a question that's specifically, I think it's from a designer, and the question is, can the panel discuss educational facilities and the challenge of social distancing among children with large classroom settings? What is the solution to that?
Dino DeFeo:
Well, you can social distance into classroom. I don't know if you're going to social distance in the quad and the bar and every place else the kids go. But as far as what a lot of the higher ed is looking at right now is, is limiting the class sizes. So if you had typically that you use a small classroom for a class size, you're using your medium sized classroom class size, and the medium went to a large and a large became a virtual class. So you're, you're using larger rooms for the, then the number of students that you had. My daughter is actually just entering college now and they just actually today emailed their list of what they're doing. And it's a masks are going to be required everywhere in common spaces when you can social distance. And they're looking at flushing out their HPAC systems much more often. So when you're running a school building, you're you're using, instead of ending the day at four o'clock or five o'clock and shutting the systems down, you're running it for an extra hour, with extra ventilation air to flush the building out. So there's going to be a number of techniques that they're going to be doing to in order to make sure that they can keep the spaces clean. It's just, it will be a challenge because kids don't always follow the rules as much as they probably should.
Peter DiMaggio:
I think one of the challenges will be the short term issue and then the longterm issue. And I think Dino just did a great job of talking about using very reasonable methods in the short term. The other one that we're seeing is, and as I mentioned with the offices, colleges are splitting classes. So if you have two classes a week, one time you're in the, in the class at one time, you're the remote person. So I think the next two semesters we'll see a lot of that. And the real question will be, let's say we get our hands around this virus, right? Let's say we get a vaccine. Do people go back to the way we did things previously and start packing people into classrooms? Or do we say, this is the first of many of these potential pandemics that we may have and are they all airborne and are the same solutions they are?
Peter DiMaggio:
So, you know, my, one of my partners wants to talk about the fact that we're in the fog right now, and we know some of our challenges, but the really big challenge for the designers is know you're designing a building right now and do you design it as if this isn't going to be here and we're going to solve it. And in the near term, you use social distancing and hand washing and masks. What do you say these kinds of pandemics may be coming again? And let's build something into this facility. And that's a really big challenge for the designers right now.
Arathi Gowda:
Yeah. I mean, I would, I would just add to this and I think people can tell already in the audience that I'm the engineer for a better social, social fabric, like keep making these points. But you know, this even gets back to classroom size or what we advocate for. Cause we get pushed. I think as engineers all the time to be code minimums, it's a lot of invisible things and there might be things that are very visible, like features that people want to pay for. And so there is a space in this too. There's a, a broader conversation about pedagogy and classroom size. But this moment is saying, you know, actually protect children, protect that institutional learning and have less children in a classroom that even though we're in the fog, maybe we can, we can be advocates for that after we get out of the fog.
Joe Bates:
Kevin, one last question. And then I'm going to ask everyone for some closing thoughts on this.
Kevin McMahon:
Okay. This, this question ties into the code discussion and the American Disabilities Act drove a lot of projects for all of us over the years. Does the panel see the government and different government agencies creating many more code modifications with this pandemic in all different facets of a project, you know, such as simple things like increasing the distance between bathroom facilities in the inside, the bathrooms, et cetera?
Peter DiMaggio:
I'll take a quick shot at that. I hope we don't do that. Dino alluded to it started out with, and I think Kate did also, my preference would be we go more towards a performance based design. We've thought it for seismic. We have a lot of structural engineers. So we like when the code specifies what kind of performance the building would need to have. And I think if we do see code changes, I'd love them to be performance based changes. And then you would have the engineering and the architectural societies really figure out the best way to solve that rather than mandating specific things. I personally would like to see that flexibility.
Arathi Gowda:
Yeah, I would agree. And it's, you know, going back to that was a perfect way to describe it, Peter, the fog, but we saw a similar thing with 9/11 and fire codes. And I think again, because we, we are seeing that the science is changing on what works best or not. And I also think what works best for this particular disease might not be the same as what works for flu or, or other things that we're still going to be concerned about. A performance based method would be really important versus being very reactionary to this specific instance of health concern.
Joe Bates:
So I'm going to ask the final question for each of you and Kate. I'm going to let you start us out on this one, give you a second to get your thoughts for repaired here. But so we thought we talked about a lot of things today. The, we talked about the buildings we work in, we live in public transit, educational settings. What are, what are buildings going to look like 10 years from now that we haven't included today? What are the, you know, I want you to put your crystal ball out there and tell us what's going to be standard in 10 years. That, that isn't today.
Dino DeFeo:
I think you're going to see buildings that to be much more flexible. You're gonna, I'm sorry. It was not directed towards me, but you know, I think it's going to have to be much more flexible. We've spent a lot of time. I think I started by saying, looking at energy efficiency and not so much the wellness of the people using the building. We're going to have to focus on the wellness part of the building and make sure that the occupants are, are safe and are taken care of. And it become a respite for them and not so much a place that is ready to go to, but a place they want to go to.
Kate Wittels:
I think well, I mean, it's hard to have a crystal ball. I think we're gonna, you know, adapt to new technologies and how we do it that are going to become commonplace. I mean, I think we we've changed so quickly from home, from working in the office, to working at home that I think we can change our behavior to do anything. So if we put our minds together and try to make our society better for women, whether it's climate or equity, I think we can force ourselves to have better behaviors in that sense. And so maybe it's more not about what, how the buildings will look differently, but maybe we'll have different people in the buildings and we'll be using them in a different way for betterment of our society. I hope
Joe Bates:
Peter, what do you think?
Peter DiMaggio:
I always have two words. Do you know, stole the first, which was flexibility? The second one I'll throw in is, is comfort. People are going to expect more from their buildings because they're comfortable in their home and they know they could be there. So the two things about coming to the office are first. What is your reason for being there? And I have a reason now I expect to have a view or, you know, I can open my window and get fresh air. So I think that was already coming. But I think the pressure on the design community is going to be huge to be comfortable in the office.
Joe Bates:
Arathi, I'm going to give you the last word here today. What's going to be different 10 years,
Arathi Gowda:
No pressure with all of these superstars. But I do think that to Kate's point, you know, the future, there's going to be a multiplicity. We don't know, but I mean, when do you know that we have an aging population? So health is going to continue to be top of mind. And Joe, you said it, well, that it's going to be, this is not something that we're going to forget tomorrow is going to be a generation of us being very mindful. But we also have the climate eight ball. So I think that there is in 10 years, I hope that both of these things have more of a symbiotic relationship as compared to what they've been in the past, where we've been exclusively efficiency and exclusively health. And that's been, I think, really damaging to the engineering of our buildings that it's like, it was never both when, when it was always one or so I'm, I'm pretty hopeful that we're looking at these solutions that are really quite clever and bring the costs down.
Arathi Gowda:
They become more ubiquitous. And they look at that nexus of efficiency in health. And I think there's a lot of things that are really quite exciting now, too. It's like all dirty. And everyone's talking about this filtration humidity, like very aggressively, and we've been circling the drain on that for a long time. And I think we're getting very serious right now. You know, Peter, even to your point about comfort, it's like, well, you know, we, we had because of code because of liability, but now we're getting serious in our forums about, okay, come on. Like what's, what's going to be the best thing. And I think that's the part where it's, it's really fun and geeky, and it's fun to hang out with engineers on those topics. So I'm very hopeful that people will come. What are the good conclusions?
Joe Bates:
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you to all our panelists day after he's going to have a final goodbye here for us, but earthy Peter, Kate Dino, and Kevin. Thanks for fielding those questions for us as well. Daphne back to you.
Daphne Bryant:
Thanks, Joe. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you to our panelists and our donors for making this session possible. Lots of great information and giving us something to think about. We have a short evaluation that we will send you this afternoon. So please share your experience with us and be sure to join us on July 16th for our next session funding and the new normal, have a great afternoon and stay well.
Thursday May 21, 2020
Government Affairs Update for May 21, 2020
Thursday May 21, 2020
Thursday 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.
Monday Apr 06, 2020
Business Continuity and Adaption in the Time of COVID-19
Monday Apr 06, 2020
Monday Apr 06, 2020
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.
Friday Apr 03, 2020
The Chairman's Corner - Engineering During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Friday Apr 03, 2020
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.
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
ACEC Coalitions Update
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
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.
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
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.
Friday Nov 01, 2019
An Interview with Rep. Bruce Westerman, P.E.
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Friday Nov 01, 2019
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.