Aloha! I hope you are having a wonderful summer. July 1st marked the beginning of a new year for ACEC Hawai‘i. We are excited to welcome back our returning board members and looking forward to working with our new board members. I am honored to be given the opportunity to be part of a great organization and an awesome Board of Directors.
We have been blessed with a history of great leaders and boards. We will strive to preserve the legacy they have left us. These will be big shoes to fill, but we are confident that the team we have in place is ready for the challenges ahead.
Under the leadership of Derek Mukai, P.E., ACECH worked diligently to maintain its core mission to protect the business interest of our member firms. Legislative advocacy, informative General Membership meetings, Hourly and Overhead Rate discussions with agencies, Quality Based Contracting, Emerging Leaders Program, Risk Management, and our Agency Committees were very effective in meeting our core mission.
ACEC National continues to work tirelessly to support our industry on a national level. They spend endless hours on legislative advocacy on issues that affect our industry and our businesses. The various programs that they manage, help us with Retirement, Insurances, HR, Education, and Events. The resources they provide give us access to a wealth of tools, information, and support that help us thrive as an industry. For additional information on the
wealth of ACEC member benefits, please go to www.acec.org.
We will endeavor to maintain and build on this strong foundation. We have started the year by creating three Ad Hoc Committees.
- The By-Laws Ad Hoc committee will work on updating our current By-Laws, as an organization we have been reviewing and updating them every 5 years or so.
- The Workforce Ad Hoc Committee will look at the Engineer/Design Professional shortage that we are facing and work towards an implementable plan that we hope will provide our industry relief in the future.
- The Permitting Ad Hoc Committee will look at permitting and find ways to work with the permitting agencies to reduce the amount of time and effort our members spend on the permit process. This will primarily be for vertical construction. We will be engaging our neighbor island committees to make this a Statewide initiative.
Additional goals for this year include outreach to help our members become familiar with the vast benefits afforded us as members of ACEC and ACECH. We hope to educate our member firms on where to get information, help, and access to the resources that are available to them. We will also be working on increasing our membership. With numbers comes strength, with this strength we hope to affect the change we desire, not only to help our industry, but to help shape the future of our Island Home.
Thank you very much for allowing us the honor to serve you, please feel free to reach out to any of us with questions, suggestions, thoughts, and advice you might have. We look forward to a great year of working together as a community, caring for and helping each other.