Editors’ Voice – July 2019

By David Bloxom, PE, VMA – Editor, Value World

This month’s issue highlights the happenings and results of the SAVE International 2019 Value Summit that was held in Portland, Oregon, USA. Mike’s article does a great recap of everything that occurred and also includes a personal note.

As the incoming President, Renee has a great message. I encourage everyone to read her article and consider providing her with the feedback she is requesting.

When I was at the Summit, there was a strong question that was asked by Renee, “What can SAVE do for you?” A couple of thoughts I had, from a chapter prospective, to answer that question were:

• Have SAVE supply technical meeting presentations. Members will attend meetings when there is something in it for them. One of the things that members want/need are PDU/CEU credits. For me, it’s for my PE registration for Oregon. All of our Summit presentations provide PDU/CEU credits already. Therefore they should qualify for any PDU/CEU requirements. There were several comments about having chapters use presentations given at the Summit; however, I caution all that some may be copywrite protested. But all we need is for presenters to give SAVE the permission to make their presentation available to others. If we only have four, that is technical content for four meetings for every chapter. That will go a long way to meet the annual meeting requirements for chapters to stay viable.

• Have SAVE facilitate the set-up of video-based web meetings. If SAVE provided and set up the web-based meetings, the chapter leadership wouldn’t have too. Not every chapter has leadership with the expertise to do it. So they have to rely on others. This all takes a lot of time, which none of us have enough of. If it becomes too hard, it doesn’t happen at all. If SAVE set up a single account for a site like GoToMeeting, for example, chapter leadership could request it. SAVE would then set it up and send it to the chapter members.

If you have any thoughts, pro or con, to answer Renee’s question, “What can SAVE do for you?”, I encourage you to contact her (renee@teamrha.com) and the SAVE business office (info@value-eng.org) with your thoughts.