Fairmont, WV – 3 December 2024 – AACE International, the leading organization for the advancement of project controls and the cost management profession, is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael T. Kobylka II, CAE, as its eleventh Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer in the organization’s 68-year history.

Mike Kobylka brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record in leadership, governance, and strategic planning, having most recently served as the Director of Leadership, Governance, and Strategy for the Association of Builders and Contractors (ABC). At ABC, a national association representing over 23,000 merit shop construction and construction-related firms across 67 chapters, Kobylka played a key role in advancing the interests of a diverse membership encompassing all specialties within the U.S. construction industry.

Kobylka’s educational credentials include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from John Carroll University (OH) and a Master of Business Administration from Ashland University (OH). Additionally, he is a Certified Association Executive (CAE), underscoring his commitment to professional excellence in the association management field.

In his new role at AACE International, Kobylka will lead the organization in its mission to provide education, certification, and networking opportunities that empower professionals in project controls and cost management. His strategic vision is expected to enhance AACE’s outreach, improve member engagement, and strengthen the organization’s position as the authoritative voice in the industry.

“AACE International is thrilled to welcome Mike as our new Executive Director and CEO,” said AACE International President Scott A. “Gator” Galbraith, PE CFCC. “His extensive association leadership experience and passion for fostering professional development aligns perfectly with our mission. We are confident that AACE will continue to grow and innovate in serving our members and the industry under his guidance.”

“I am honored to step into the role of Executive Director/CEO for AACE International, an organization with a storied history of advancing cost engineering and project management excellence,” stated Kobylka. “I am excited to work alongside our dedicated members and staff to drive innovation, strengthen our global impact, and continue delivering exceptional value to the industries we serve.”

Kobylka will officially assume his position on December 2.

For more information about AACE International and its initiatives, please visit www.aacei.org. 

About AACE International: Established in 1956, AACE International is the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering. AACE International is the leading organization dedicated to advancing the project controls profession and providing resources for professionals engaged in cost management and project planning. Together with the AACE International Certification Institute, it serves over 10,000 members and certificants in 100 countries. Cost Engineering is a field of study using integrated means and methods to enable sound decision making in enterprise asset management. 

Media Contact:

Jennie M. Cunningham-Amos
Director: Governance, Marketing, & Meetings
AACE International
304.296.8444 x1106
jamos@aacei.org

The AACE International Certification Institute’s Certification Board is excited to announce that the DRMP certification examination is officially open for registration after a two-year restructuring. This expertise-level certification, long considered a benchmark for excellence in cost engineering and project controls, has been reimagined to reflect our profession’s evolving landscape better and ensure it continues to set a high standard for professional expertise.

The decision to pause the exam was to provide time and devote resources to update the content and structure since launching AACE’s Project Risk Management Professional (PRMP), the professional level certification in 2021 – which was borne out of the DRMP exam. During the restructuring period, the DRMP Committee worked closely with leading experts and industry partners to ensure the restructured certification remains relevant in today’s dynamic risk management environment that reaches numerous industries.

What’s New?

• Updated Content: The revamped exam now includes the latest developments in decision and risk management, ensuring that certified professionals are current with the skills and knowledge that matter most at the highest levels of responsibility.
• Improved Delivery: We’ve made the certification more accessible by offering in-person testing and secure online options through remote proctoring, allowing candidates to choose the best schedule and location for the exam.
• Refined Domain Structure: Domain 1 focuses on basic cost engineering and statistics. Domain 2 will allow test candidates to choose a memo based on their preference for a risk—or decision-based scenario. Domain 3 focuses on complex decision and risk management practices scenarios. Domain 4 focuses on general decision and risk management practices. These enhancements aim to provide a practical, hands-on assessment of critical skills.
• Revised Recommended Practice: RP71R-12 has been updated to reflect an extensive list of all relevant RPs, PPGs, and PPDs published since the first edition in June 2013.
• Revised DRMP Study Guide: This has been updated to include changes made to the examination, references, and recommended practice.

The DRMP has long been a prestigious credential within our community, and AACE’s relaunch ensures it continues to hold that reputation. Those who earn this certification demonstrate mastery of critical skills, a commitment to professional development, and excellence in executing responsibilities.

Do you want to be a DRMP?

The first thing you must do is understand if you’re eligible. The eligibility requirements are:

• 4-year college or university degree*
• 4 years of industry-related experience
• 4 years of experience (does not need to be continuous) directly related to the field of decision and risk management, with at least 18 months of recent experience required, demonstrated by providing any combination of the following:
  • • Three (3) letters of recommendation from a client (past or present) describing the project’s complexity, the type of risk management implemented, and the candidate’s role in implementing or providing such risk management services. All letters submitted must include the time the candidate spent on decision and risk management tasks. If three letters of recommendation and no work products are submitted, those durations must sum to 4 years of combined experience.
    • Three (3) work products personally produced by the candidate that demonstrate having performed any aspect of the risk management work (decision analysis, schedule and cost risk analyses, implementation of risk management programs, risk workshops, etc.) on their projects to sum 4 years. The candidate must demonstrate they were the primary author/contributor in developing the work product. Merely being a junior-level participant or member of a larger team without being the lead is not an adequate demonstration of a senior-level practitioner with leadership responsibility. NOTE: A candidate may provide a total of three (3) letters of recommendation or three (3) work products, or a combination of two (2) letters of recommendation and one (1) work product, or a combination of one (1) letter of recommendation and two (2) work products, etc.

Depending on the combination that works for your application, remember that at least one recommendation letter or work product must demonstrate recent experience within the past 18 months.

* Applicant may substitute a 4-year of college degree with an additional 4 years of industry related experience or one of the following professional certifications: AACE’s CCP; CEP; EVP; PSP; Certified Construction Manager (CCM); Certified Professional Constructor (CPC); Professional engineer (PE); Registered Architect (RA); or Chartered Surveyor.

Registration is now open for all eligible candidates. When you are ready to register, click here. For step-by-step instructions for creating your application, click here.

Thank you for your continued support and commitment to excellence within the AACE International Certification Institute.  We look forward to seeing many of you achieve this highly valued credential and to celebrating your career successes.

This document is intended to provide a guideline, not a standard, for using fault tree analysis (FTA) to improve the quality of the outputs of the project or product by providing a comprehensive and systematic way to identify, assess, and prioritize risks. FTA enhances a decision-maker’s understanding of the complex relationships regarding potential risks or failure points that should be addressed to improve or optimize project outcomes. This document further provides practitioners with the opportunity to improve the reliability of design and to improve the quality by reducing potential failures. Examining what would potentially cause the product to be less reliable is also related to decision analysis. For an organization that executes capital projects, the FTA is also applicable in providing insight into performing other analyses, such as:

• Functional analysis of highly complex systems
• Evaluation of safety requirements and specifications
• Evaluation of system reliability and the identification of potential design defects and safety hazards
• Simplification of design to support operations and maintenance requirements (for lifecycle cost analysis)
• Evaluation of human interfaces (project teams and systemic risks)

System failure analysis is an overarching process that includes different techniques, which include fault tree, logic tree, fishbone diagrams, failure mode and effects analysis, etc. Fault tree analysis is just one tool that can be used in system failure analysis. With that said, this RP is intended to introduce the purpose and basic methods of developing a fault tree, calculating the consequence for the failure of the overall system (called the top event) given the structure of the tree and the probability (P) that the building block elements (called gates and events) occur, and identifying the most important sources of potential failure for inspection and action.

FTA is a deductive, top-down method aimed at analyzing the effects of initiating faults and events on a complex system and is defined as “a risk analysis method used to evaluate risk threats employing a deductive logic tree linking a parent event to the combinations of sub-events that could cause it.” A fault tree is not the same as an event tree analysis. Fault trees assist project teams in examining undesired events, identifying the cause(s) leading to potential failures, and determining how to prevent them in the future.

Fault tree analysis necessitates a robust level of engineering that accurately represents events and their interactions. This requires an engineering framework that delineates basic events and their interactions, enabling the construction of the fault tree. Even in early partial designs, FTA can identify major causes of system failure, guiding engineering efforts to mitigate these issues, for example, by incorporating backup systems for failure-prone events.

Using the FTA methods described in this RP assists in asset planning. These planning efforts include the optimization, optioning, and value-engineering assessments of the equipment and systems. This further includes improving the quality of the design to ensure the operability, reliability, and maintainability of the asset(s). Asset planning, value engineering, and quality management all support risk management functions. These efforts ultimately determine the lifecycle cost of the equipment, systems, etc., which supports the decision to invest in the asset.

Contributors:

Dr. David T. Hulett, FAACE (Primary Contributor)
Lance Stephenson, CCP, FAACE Hon. Life (Primary Contributor)
James E. Arrow, DRMP
Tim Boatwright, EVP
Francisco Cruz, CCP
Larry R. Dysert, CCP CEP DRMP FAACE Hon. Life
Rafi Polak
John R. Schuyler, CCP DRMP
Pei Tang, PRMP PSP

About David:

127R-23: Choosing Among Strategic Alternatives Using Branching Concepts in Decision Modeling

The purpose of this recommended practice (RP) is to describe risk analysis concepts that can be used when important alternative selection strategies are being developed by senior leaders. These selections are made well before there is a detailed project plan, schedule, and cost estimate. The RP describes the development of simplified models to assess alternatives under consideration. These models highlight key systemic and project-specific risk characteristics. They provide clarity, transparency, traceability, and repeatability consistent with recommended project risk analysis practices. Models are presented here to illustrate two of these methods, probabilistic branching and conditional branching.

During the “Select” phase 1 for any significant project, strategic alternatives are being evaluated, and one of the main considerations will include the balance of risk driving any alternative. This recommended practice (RP) addresses decision modeling using quantified risk analysis methods to conduct an analysis of alternatives (AoA). The model is simplified to highlight the key risks and feasible alternative configurations, to select the best alternative. This RP document is not intended to be a standard. Rather it is intended to provide a guideline for using project risk analysis simulation capabilities of probabilistic and conditional branching to evaluate alternative selection within a simplified model framework of the project’s strategy. RPs are considered by most practitioners to be good processes that can be relied on and that they would recommend be considered for use where applicable. The RP will be useful to organizational leaders and decision-makers, project management, and risk team leaders.

Contributors:

Keith D. Hornbacher (Primary Contributor)
Dr. David T. Hulett, FAACE (Primary Contributor)
James E. Arrow, DRMP
Jessica M. Colbert, PRMP PSP
Francisco Cruz, PE CCP
Larry R. Dysert, CCP CEP DRMP FAACE Hon. Life
John K. Hollmann, PE CCP CEP DRMP FAACE Hon. Life
Sagar B. Khadka, CCP DRMP PSP FAACE
Dr. Luis Henrique Martinez
Dr. Dan Melamed, CCP EVP FAACE
Abbas Shakourifar, PSP
Lance Stephenson, CCP FAACE Hon. Life

About Keith: