By Renee Hoekstra, CVS – President, SAVE International
All I can say is THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! What a great group. You have listened and stepped up. We had 31 people volunteer for our Tiger Teams and we’ve had quite a few request applications for SAVE International Board positions. I am thankful and grateful to all of you who have agreed to serve. Again, I say Thank You!
As an update, we have two very special volunteers who have agreed to be the Chairperson for each of the Tiger Teams. I am working with them to finalize the approach and you should be hearing from them soon.
On another note, with so many volunteers, I may ask a few of you to serve on a third Tiger Team related to certification. I’m waiting for the final approach information and then I will have someone reach out to you to ask. All of this is so exciting and I’m so looking forward to what our teams will provide to the SAVE Board for further consideration.
You all know that the VMBoK is in its final stages of editing and is still scheduled for release in June, in time for our 2020 Value Summit. However, we want you to be aware that there has been a little glitch and we will be renaming it from the VMBoK to the VM Guide. There are legal issues related to this and the Board believed it better to just change the name. However, we believe this aligns nicely with our Function Analysis Guide. With the new VM Guide, as I had mentioned last month, certification and education will be aligning with this new VM Guide. To this end, many things were discussed at the SAVE Board and Certification Board meetings in January related to budgets and work to be accomplished, as well as engaging in services whereby SAVE will be able to generate future income to aid us in our efforts to ‘Spread the Word’. We will be sharing this throughout the next couple of months as it relates to education.
So, what else is new, you might ask? I know you have all been very patient with our challenges with our VMA testing. We thank you for this and I’m thrilled to announce, along with the Certification Board, that we have a new testing company and new approaches for our VMA, and soon to be our CVS, exams. We will have worked out all of the bugs and are currently on schedule to have the VMA up and running by the beginning of April. I know this has been frustrating for all of you and both Boards thank you for your patience, but I think you will find it has been worth it. More information will be provided as the exams become available and the approaches to testing.
The 2020 Value Summit Planning Committee is gearing up, and we had a great response for papers and training courses this year. We will definitely be able to meet our goals for ensuring that you are able to earn the PDUs you need for maintaining your certification by providing some great learning opportunities. Plan on attending the 2020 Value Summit – get some Big Ideas in the Big Easy! Plan on spending a few extra days in New Orleans, the Big Easy. There is so much to see and do. The World War II Museum is amazing, but you need at least a half day to spend there, so come early. I’ve been and we didn’t get to see it all, but make sure you spend the little extra money to see the 4D show, it’s pretty amazing! And don’t forget your beignets at Café Du Monde, the trip wouldn’t be complete without them.
The SAVE Board and the Certification Board had our joint and then separate meetings in January. We had some amazing discussions and were able to accomplish quite a few things. Six months have already flow by and although we are on our way to an amazing year of accomplishments for SAVE, we still have a long way to go. To update you on one of my personal focuses was completing the partnering agreement between the USACE and SAVE. The agreement has been reviewed by the Board and it is in the hands of the USACE. We are hoping to get this finalized for the Value Summit in June and have an official signing. This is so exciting and a great opportunity for both organizations. I will be reaching out to other federal agencies in the U.S. to complete similar agreements.
One last note is related to marketing and communications. With Anthony Dunham’s help and his small task team, we will hopefully have a “Government Tool Box” available on the SAVE website soon. As soon as we have a final commitment, we will share this with all of you.
Thank you again to all of our membership for your continued to support of the organization, and to me personally!
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