By Michael Pearsall, P.Eng., CVS, FEC – Vice President / President-Elect, SAVE International
Certainly 2020 has brought its challenges for many people – we all need to stop for a moment and acknowledge this important fact. Regardless of how our individual lives have been affected, I’m sure we could all use some good news and positive thinking. One of the great things about being in the Value Methodology world is the ability to often turn challenges around and see opportunities. With this in mind, for this Value Summit column I am going to focus on the positive and the milestones we have achieved this year.
Back in the spring, we were faced with not being able to have our in-person Value Summit for the first time in SAVE International’s history. Through the efforts of a dedicated committee and a number of presenters willing to quickly pivot and submit quality recorded material, we were able to successfully host our first virtual Value Summit.
A few months later, we passed another milestone by – for the first time – having most of the Value Summit content available in SAVE’s online store. This was an important milestone for me as it moves towards my vision of allowing members from around the world to access the exact same Summit content in their homes at their chosen viewing time. I hope this is just one of many steps forward in the journey to make our content easily accessible worldwide befitting our international organization.
In November, we passed another important milestone with the successful completion of our 2020 Virtual Value Educational Event. This two-day event took a slightly different approach with a focus on longer professional development sessions. This was a new format with the look and feel we had originally planned for the education track of the 2020 Value Summit.
On the first day after some inspirational opening remarks on virtual delivery from the SAVE President, Renee Hoekstra, we had sessions on Program Management and Implementation by myself and SteVE Holmes, followed by an in-depth introduction to Functional Performance Specifications by Lucie Parrot. On the second day we had an in-depth review of Function Analysis based on the new VM Guide by Javier Masini, followed by a thorough review of the virtual workshop experience by Drew Algase.
Many thanks to all of the presenters for the time they took to prepare their excellent material. I certainly was pleased to have two SAVE Fellows among this group passing on their experiences. Thank you as well to the attendees, who took the time out of their busy lives to listen and fully participate with plenty of good questions and attentiveness for the entire event.
Those who attended for both days were able to earn eight Professional Development Units (PDUs) and you still can too if you missed it. Videos from both days have been captured, quickly edited and will be posted in SAVE’s online store by the time you are reading this.
President Hoekstra has shared a number of other milestones that we are achieving within SAVE this year as we continue to adapt to the new opportunities in the virtual world. Please continue to let us know your ideas and what we should focus on next.
I can’t say what 2021 will bring in the way of challenges or world events; however, I can say that we are working towards a new milestone with a successful 2021 Value Summit. Currently, we are hopeful that we will be meeting in-person in Arizona this June 5-9, 2021. As a reminder, the SAVE Board is still focusing on doing an in-person Summit every two years so hopefully you will all be in attendance this June. Rest assured that myself and many others involved are carefully watching world events and will be ready to pivot again if we need to like in 2020 keeping the well-being of SAVE members in mind.
As much as I like to celebrate the success of our first virtual Value Summit, I can’t deny that getting together in-person is so much better. Not only are we able to deliver three separate tracks of presentations, but the networking in and around the event is ever so valuable. Once again this year, we are planning a track entirely of longer professional development sessions focused on core competencies and the principles in our new VM Guide.
I am looking forward to sharing many other exciting details about the 2021 Value Summit over the coming months. I can tell you that I have been to the area myself and it is a great location with shopping, good food and entertainment next door.
A final reminder that we are nearing the close of the 2021 Call for Papers and Call for Courses. Please see the SAVE website immediately to get your submissions in. The submission deadline has been extended to December 15, 2020. I want to emphasise that again this year we will be looking for papers and specific courses that explicitly deliver on one of the SAVE core competencies. Please visit www.value-eng.org/2021ValueSummit to see the revised guidelines and start your submission.
In closing, as important as milestones are, so are the team that helps you put them there. None of this would have been possible without a strong group of volunteers. Thank you to all who helped us achieve our 2020 milestones and thank you to those who have formed another great committee this year working on the 2021 Value Summit.
Looking forward to hopefully seeing all of you at the 2021 Value Summit at the Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel & Spa in Glendale, Arizona in June 2021.
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