We are approaching the end of year 1 for the term of your current slate of officers. The year has flown by and with everyone’s increasing workload we have faced the challenge of making progress on our goals for NABIE while we also meet the needs of our clients.
I think we have made reasonable progress on our goals, yet it is not for me to make that pronouncement as much as it is for NABIE members to indicate satisfaction with our progress. The primary goals we have been working on this year include:
- Improving the NABIE web site because we rely on being an effective virtual organization.
- Looking beyond our normal and well-established partners for ways to increase benefits to members.
- Increasing member involvement in NABIE activities.
- Building a strategic plan that addresses how to provide better service to members while we grow the membership.
We have made progress in all of these areas. You will hear more about this at our annual conference, but briefly, in the last year we have:
- Hired a web consultant to make the site more user-friendly and easier to update.
- Continued our discussions with the Architectural Engineering Institute of ASCE in an effort to reach beyond our normal partners to test possible benefits to members.
- All of the board members and officers have made important contributions to the organization over the last year.
- No specific progress has been made on developing a strategic plan but the progress made on the above items does move us along a path of strategic change; the future condition is still undefined at this moment.
We will continue to work on improving service to members in an effort to make NABIE of benefit to you, to make NABIE an organization you want to participate in, and to have NABIE members be some of the best informed engineers in our profession. Your officers are always available; please contact any one of us if you need help with an issue or have something you would like for the organization to pursue.
Our annual conference will be held next month (February) in Dallas, TX. The program is strong with interesting topics and we hope you enjoy some new approaches to delivering program content. I look forward to seeing you there.
Bill Coulbourne, P.E.
