October 2020 President’s Message
President’s Message – OCTOBER 2020 NEWSLETTER
A Word from the President
Great to kick off the new year for ASCE San Francisco Section, I’m excited to be your President and look forward to talking with you in our group zooms and individually. It’s been said too many times already how unique this year is; I’d like to focus on how impressive engineers have been in adapting and moving on to complete their work, family responsibilities and professional/social engagements. Participation in ASCE events has been quite high, in our Section and nationally. I personally participated in four ASCE events in September: ASCE Presidents/Governors Forum; ASCE V-Tech Conference 2020 (5 day virtual conference); ASCE Region 9 Awards Program; San Francisco Section Annual Meeting and Awards. All were first class organizations and pulled off flawlessly. I learned how to use the chat feature to ask questions and look for people I know that were attending and reach out to them. Left me looking for the next ASCE event.
Thinking about engineers’ responses to national and global crises, they have always been complete, impressive, and without a need for abundant recognition as some professions have. I identified a few during my closing comments at our annual meeting and awards ceremony, and there are many, many more examples. Engineers have to be the brightest to even get through college, so it shouldn’t be surprising. We tend to be a quieter crowd. However, we do need to stop and take time to recognize our accomplishments as an industry and profession, and it’s such a wonderful tradition for San Francisco Section to do this. Having worked in other areas of the country, I can say that there are many unique challenges on the west coast and the engineering responses are impressive. So it’s good to see the project and individual award winners, learn about them and their accomplishments. And by the way, many nominated that weren’t awarded, but certainly worthy. I extend my congratulations to the project and individual award winners for 2020, well done. They will all be up soon on www.asce-sf.org
For the year forward, we have the challenge of staying connected individually and as a group without personal interaction, so I ask you all, what are you going to do to make that happen? It will require some different effort, probably not extra effort but different. And it’s up to you to take advantage of the opportunities, step up and make it happen. I have challenged the Institutes and Branches to get together and hold a forum before the end of the year, which would give opportunity for stimulating intellectual discussion on an interesting technical topic, with dialogue from the participants which will trigger good things in our brains. I have a number of ideas on topics and combinations of Branches/Institutes for this, and stand ready to discuss with you. Be safe, stay well, and enjoy life.
Fred Blickle, PE, F, ASCE