By Katherine Bethany – President, SAVE International
Time sure flies by, doesn’t it! It is already May and that means I’ll be seeing many of you in just over one month in Austin, TX at the 2018 Value Summit. I hope if you haven’t already done so, that you have registered for the Summit and that you have signed up for one or more of the great training offerings as well. If we don’t get at least five people registered for a specific class by the middle of May, we will have to cancel the class – so please register early!
Speaking of the Summit, we are still accepting sponsorships – such as the scanner sponsorship. Please consider sponsoring the Summit or asking companies you work with on Value Engineering Studies to be a sponsor. Please see Mike Pearsall’s article in this edition of Value World for more information on the upcoming event.
I would also like to remind you to vote in the SAVE elections if you haven’t already. We are very close to reaching a quorum and would like to have the vote/results tallied and the results given to those who ran before the upcoming Summit. This would allow us to accomplish so much more at the Annual Business Meeting and SAVE International Board of Directors Meeting just before the Summit.
My final thought – I returned to Washington, DC in late April to attend the funeral of a former colleague, and this got me thinking about my former life working at the State Department’s Overseas Buildings Operations and how I was “recruited” into value engineering. For those who haven’t heard the story, I was asked by someone who saw my resume to apply for the open Value Engineering Manager position. Long story short, I did and was selected even though I had never heard of Value Engineering, Value Analysis or the Value Methodology. If it hadn’t been for a couple of SAVE members who voluntarily mentored me and taught me what I needed to know, I never would have been successful at the position.
So, the moral of this story – please look around you and reach out to someone who might not have heard about SAVE, Value Analysis, Value Engineering or the Value Methodology and take the time to explain it. You might be grooming someone who might hire Value Consultants, a future advocate for the use of the Methodology or even a future SAVE Board Member by reaching out.
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