“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” —Mandy Hale

First off, I would like to thank all those members who took the time to vote this year. It was an exceptional slate of candidates and a close race for some positions. Each of them deserves recognition for taking the initiative to run for a volunteer position on the board and help drive our association to success with our strategic initiatives. For those who were not successful this time, your service elsewhere in the association is valued and appreciated and I hope you will consider running again in the future. I know that the successful candidates will bring their best to the fore in support of our Association in these positions and I’m looking forward to working with you on the upcoming 2023-2024 Board of Directors.

But this election was not just about board positions. There was a bylaw amendment up for consideration and, by an overwhelming majority, this also passed, Thank you. I know this amendment represents change, but as we’ve seen over the last few years, change can be good and is often necessary. This change allows the association and our Certification Institute to govern appropriately and ensure strategic alignment between these two entities.

Since our last update, I had the chance to visit and speak with members at the AACE Houston Symposium and the AACE Northeast Symposium.  Kudos to the organizers of both events for putting on such well-run events. A couple of takeaways I had from both of these engagements:

1. Members and section leaders still have questions about what the future looks like given the section modernization plan. I hope I was able to answer some of these while I was face-to-face with people, but we will continue to engage and seek feedback as we re-structure to ensure agility in the program and equity of access to people who want to coalesce locally for technical networking in global regions that cannot meet the current minimum standard and financial requirements which section currently need to satisfy. Should you have any further questions please reach out to Mary Kathryn or Deb Lally at headquarters for additional information.
2. Section face-to-face engagement is thriving in a post Covid world. While people appreciate having the option for remote participation, they now also want to engage and interact in person
3. There was interest in understanding what strategic partnerships the Association has, and what we are doing with them. AACE has a limited number of relationships with other organizations covered in Memorandums of Understanding or other agreements and we are currently working with each of them to develop collaborative offerings which will serve and support each party. The current list of organizations includes:

• American Bar Association Forum of the Construction Industry (ABA)
• Construction Management Association of America (CMAA)
• Department of Energy (DOE)
• SAVE International
• RICS

And as we get closer to the ConEx, please remember to remember to register and I look forward to seeing you in Chicago in June!