BSCES Engineering Management Group

by Matthew Cote, PE, Project Manager, CDM Smith, BSCES Engineer Management Group Chair

 

The Engineering Management Group (EMG) held its first dinner event of the 2011/2012 season on Thursday December 5, 2010 at the Radisson Hotel in Boston. The event featured a panel discussion on the pros and cons of Contract Delivery Methods including Design/Bid/Build (DBB), Design/Build (DB) and Construction Manager at Risk. The panel was made up of Tom Walsh, Director Emeritus, Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District; Bill Endicott, Skanska USA Building; Brian O’Rourke, Partner, McCarter & English, LLP; and Lorraine Finnegan, Senior Associate, Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, who also acted as the moderator for the discussion. The panelists represented viewpoints from the perspective of the owner, contractor, construction attorney and architect, respectively. Each panelist was able to speak from their personal experiences with each method and provided positives and negatives on working through each method. The event was well attended, sparked a spirited discussion, and was very informative to those not as familiar with the topic. Overall the program was well received and a success. On behalf of the membership of the EMG, I would like to thank the panelists and all those who attended for their continued support of the group.

 

Though the EMG’s program schedule for the rest of the season is still unconfirmed, the group has been hard at work to organize and finalize two more upcoming events. Our second event, tentatively scheduled for February 29, 2012, will hopefully be held on the campus of MIT as an outreach to its ASCE student chapters, in addition to being an informative and thought provoking program for the members of BSCES. The event is to include a tour of MIT’s Media Lab involving a discussion of its mission and research of how emerging technologies will affect everyday life in the near future. The final event of the season will be the highly sought-after Joseph C. Lawler Lecture, which is presently scheduled for May 31, 2012, and is held annually in honor of Joe Lawler, CDM’s first president. Each year the EMG is given the responsibility of selecting a prominent leader with significant ties to the engineering community to present at the lecture. The lecture’s mission is to provide a forum to help fulfill and further the “focus on the understanding, development and enhancement of the different aspects of leadership in the field of engineering.” We have identified and contacted Katherine Craven, the newly installed head of the University of Massachusetts Building Authority. In this role, she is tasked with implementing and running the university’s system wide $3.1 billion capital improvement plan. All of us at the EMG are pleased Ms. Craven will be able to join us in the spring for this prestigious event.

 

Hopefully many of you will have interest and be able to attend the balance of this year’s EMG events. If you have any interest in engineering management, engineering leadership, or associated topics related to either, I encourage you to participate and become involved with the EMG. We typically convene on the first Wednesday of each month to coordinate and plan our event calendar. Please contact me if you would like to become involved, have any questions, or would like to register for an upcoming EMG event. I can be contacted via email at cotem@cdmsmith.com or by phone at 617/452-6576.