“Help you matter more and enable you to make a bigger difference”
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Region 8 Director's Column
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In This Issue
- Region 8 Director's Column
- Region 8 Award Nominations - Due May 1, 2020
- Region 8 Calendar of Upcoming Events
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Aloha and Mahalo for your membership in ASCE and for your support for our civil engineering profession.
Don’t forget that your membership includes 10 free PDHs. Choose up to 10 on-demand webinars from the more than 200 on-demand webinars. Each one is a 60-90-minute webinar worth 1-1.5 PDHs–that’s up to 15 FREE PDHs from our comprehensive continuing education library – just for being a member! The list of the 200 on-demand webinars is available
here
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Please be safe during the global outbreak of the coronavirus (COVAID-19). In response, ASCE is committed to reducing the risk of adverse health impacts to the thousands of ASCE members, guests and staff that participate in numerous ASCE committee meetings, conferences and events. Please consider conducting business via teleconference or videoconference whenever possible. For updates on ASCE’s actions related to COVID-19, visit
https://www.asce.org/covid-19/
.
On March 9, the Executive Committee convened to address whether events planned later that week in Washington D.C. should move forward. Based on information at that time, it was decided to cancel the Legislative Fly-In because of Congressional staff potentially being unavailable for visitors. It was also decided that the Outstanding Project and Leaders (OPAL) Awards Gala and the Board of Direction meetings would continue as planned.
The Society held its annual OPAL Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. on March 13. While the event attendance was understandably smaller, the event was still festive and inspiring.
Congratulations to the 2019 OPAL award winners listed below.
Ted Craddock, P.E., M.ASCE – Construction
Ronald M. Noble, P.E., L.S., D.CE, D.PE, D.WRE, Dist.M.ASCE – Design
Raymond J. Krizek, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, Hon.M.ASCE, NAE – Education
James Starace, P.E., M.ASCE – Government
Sergio A. Pecori, P.E., F.ASCE – Management
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Attending OPAL Awards Gala with ASCE Treasurer Jennifer Epp (left) and Marcia Smith (right), wife of ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith
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ASCE honored the Bayonne Bridge: Replacement of Main Span Roadway and Approach Structures with the 2020 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) award. The Bayonne Bridge connects Bayonne, New Jersey, with Staten Island, in New York City. Through a first-of-its-kind construction sequence, the replacement roadway was built over the existing roadway and within the arch structure – keeping both road and sea traffic open. The OCEA award, established in 1960, recognizes the project that best illustrates superior civil engineering skills and represents a significant contribution to civil engineering progress and society.
This year, for the first time, ASCE celebrated 10 projects as OCEA Honor Award recipients, with the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco announced as the OCEA Silver award winner and Scotland’s Queensferry Crossing the OCEA Bronze winner.
Our organization has seen our membership decrease by over 10,000 members in the last 10 years. In order to continue the diverse and expansive programs that ASCE offers and to support our great profession, we need everyone’s help to increase our membership. This could be helping students to transition to full membership, reminding younger members that ASCE membership is a win-win by the support of their professional development while supporting the profession, and by recruiting new members. I challenge everyone to do one thing different this year to recruit one member. I challenge the Region 8 YMFs to help increase the student transition rate from 20% to 40%.
I had the pleasure and honor of assisting the Tacoma-Olympia (TO) Section recruit the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) on March 4. With the additional assistance of the Seattle Section YMF, we developed and presented the “Value of ASCE Membership” to the WSDOT Assistant Secretary of Mega-Programs/Chief Engineer and all the Region Administrators. We gave a short background on ASCE and why ASCE would be good for WSDOT engineers. As a result, WSDOT committed to sponsoring ASCE for 35 of their young engineers. Thanks to WSDOT CEO and Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar for initiating the idea. Mahalo to TO Section President Bernie Sison, TO Section President-Elect Tom Szymoniak, TO Section YMF Co-Chair Mohammad Khan, TO Section Student Member Jason Fairhurst and Seattle Section YMF President Romulos Ragudos for preparing the presentation and helping to present to WSDOT.
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Recruiting new members at Washington State Department of Transportation with Tacoma-Olympia and Seattle Section members
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Attending the Tacoma-Olympia Section Board March Meeting
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Mahalo for being a member of ASCE and for all that you do to help our great profession. #Region8isgreat!!!
Mahalo and Aloha,
Tony C.G. Lau, P.E., ENV SP, F.ASCE
Society Director, Region 8
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ASCE Oregon Section Update
The ASCE Oregon Section’s geographic reach includes Southwest Washington (Clark, Cowlitz, Skamania, and Wahkiakum counties) and all of Oregon, except Morrow, Umatilla, and Wallowa counties, which are part of the Columbia Section, and Baker and Malheur counties, which belong to the Southern Idaho Section. The Oregon Section has four student chapters, two branches, three technical groups, and a younger member forum.
Our Section hosts monthly meetings, and we collaborate with our various groups, branches and student chapters to host lunch seminars, volunteer activities, networking events, happy hours, and technical tours. Below are a few examples of some of our recent successful events:
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Oregon Section K-12 Outreach
ASCE Oregon Section's K-12 Outreach Chair, Melvin Ewing, was recently interviewed and featured in the ASCE News article "Three Years Later, Still Dreaming" for his organization of a Dream Big event in November 2019. The event took place at the High Desert Christian Academy located in Prineville, Oregon. To read the full article, click
HERE.
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E-Week 2020
At the 56th Annual Oregon Engineers Week High School Program, the ASCE YMF hosted their 5th Annual Straw Bridge Competition! Innovation and competition were at an all-time high from the students with over 25 teams competing. To be more environmentally friendly this year, we used paper straws instead of plastic for the first time.
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The students were judged in four categories: Bridge Capacity, Bridge Efficiency, Closest Capacity Guess, and Aesthetics. The highest capacity bridge held 3,202 grams, the most efficient bridge held 75 times its weight, one student group was within 8 grams of their guess, and as always, a truss bridge was the most aesthetic! The YMF also awarded a scholarship to a bright high school student from Barlow High School who is interested in pursuing a future in engineering and design.
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Meet a Civil Engineer Day and Scholarship
The student chapters of the ASCE Oregon Section come together to host an annual event called “Meet a Civil Engineer Day”, where students have the opportunity to meet and mingle with civil engineering professionals. At this event, the Byron Jones Scholarship was awarded to four students who were recognized as distinguished leaders in their ASCE Student Chapter groups. Congratulations!
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We would like to thank our wonderful and committed volunteers for all their hard work in making all these events possible!
Bahaar Taylor, ASCE Oregon Section President
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REGION 8 AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE MAY 1, 2020
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Deadline for the Region 8 Award nominations has been revised to May 1, 2020. Nomination forms are due to
Fred Nelson
. The four categories are listed below.
• Engineer of the Year
• Young Engineer of the Year
• Project of the Year, Greater than $10 million
• Project of the Year, Less than $10 million
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Region 8 Calendar of Upcoming Events
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In response to COVID-19, the April Events and Meetings have been cancelled.
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