Richard Matson, PE, Team Leader, Bridge & Tunnel Inspections, AECOM
January and February were an engaging and exciting months for BSCES. Our President, Katie Swanson, welcomed her newborn son, Max Milo Swanson, born in the late hours on January 18, 2026! Let’s all congratulate Katie and wish her the best in her maternity leave. With that, I will be stepping into the role of Acting President while Katie is on leave for these next few months. Katie hopes to return to BSCES around April 2026 to finish out her term as President.
BSCES continues to put on events during these winter months, and we are deep in the planning stages for many more events to come. Our Public Awareness and Outreach Committee has been very active and successfully put on two Future City Competitions (Western New England Region Semifinals were held at the JFK Middle School in Enfield, CT on January 17, 2026 and the Eastern New England Region Semifinals & Regional Finals were held at Wentworth Institute of Technology on January 24, 2026). Congratulations to all the teams that competed in this fun filled event and extra congratulations to Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) for winning the region with their city called Doil de Janeiro. WMA competed at the Future City National Finals in DC on February 14-18, 2026!
In addition, the Public Awareness & Outreach Committee put on the 35th Annual Model Bridge Competition, which was held at Wentworth institute of Technology on February 7, 2026. Congratulations to all the teams that competed in this fun filled event and extra congratulations to Malden Catholic Group #8 (HS Team) and Swampscott Public Library (MS Team) for winning the aesthetics portion of the competition and to Newton South High School (HS Team) and Saint Paul’s Choir School (MS Team) for winning the efficiency/ultimate load.
Special thanks to the NCEES for funding the Public Awareness and Outreach Committee events!
Our other committees have been busy as well. There were two webinars hosted in January: Climate Change and the Evolving Standard of Care on January 20, 2026 (co-hosted by the Committee on Sustainability & YMG) and Construction Management Plans – Technical Webinar on January 28, 2026 (co-hosted by CI & T&DI). In addition, the YMG hosted their annual Networking & Billiards Tourney at the Beantown Pub in Boston on January 21, 2026. Our YMG Chair, Justin Cadima, Region 1 Governor, Geoffrey Schwartz, four Northeastern student members, and myself attended the 2026 ASCE Regions 1, 2, 4, & 5 Multi-Region Leadership Council (MRLC) in Jacksonville, FL from January 8-10, 2026. This conference combines section & branch leaders (WSBIL) with younger members (ERYMC) and student members (WSCL). It was great to collaborate with other sections along the east coast and as far as the mid-west in this multi-day conference. We hope to brainstorm some future ideas that came out of this workshop.
In February, our continuing education committee hosted the FHWA-NHI-130125 Tunnel Safety Inspection Refresher in Worcester on February 3-5, 2026. In addition, the YMG volunteered by sorting clothing at a Cradles to Crayons event on February 21, 2026. There were some other webinars and in-person panel events planned in February that unfortunately were impacted by several large snow storms/blizzard conditions. These impacted events are planned to be rescheduled for the Spring months.
In addition, our continuing education committee has been hard at work on revamping the BSCES PE Refresher course based on the new PE format. We attempted to launch the PE Civil – Geotechnical Exam Refresher Course in February 2026, but unfortunately, we had to make the hard decision to cancel this course due to lack of enrollments. We will attempt to launch the PE Civil – Structural Exam Refresher Course in the Fall 2026 and hope to re-launch the Geotechnical Exam Refresher Course following the Structural component. These will be the first of many PE refresher courses. We hope over the course of the next fiscal year to offer all the PE Civil disciplines in a refresher course. We appreciate your patience with how long it takes to redevelop these courses as we want them to be as successful as possible for our members to succeed in the PE Civil Exam. Also, our continuing education committee has scheduled an additional FHWA-NHI-130125 Tunnel Safety Inspection Refresher for April 14-16, 2026 in Worcester and we have scheduled the FHWA-NHI-130078 Bridge Inspection Techniques for Nonredundant Steel Tension Members for June 9-11, 2026 in Worcester! This committee is planning additional NHI courses throughout the year, so be on the lookout for those.
The YMG Student Scholarship deadline for applications closed on January 9, 2026. This is for two awards in the amount of $5,000 each! The YMG is currently reviewing the applicants! The CI Francis Keville Scholarship deadline for applications closed on January 16, 2026. This is for one award in the amount of $10,000. The Construction Institute Boston Chapter is currently reviewing the applicants! In addition, the 2026 Professor Peter S. Eagleson Memorial Scholarship is live and accepting applications! This is for one award with a total value of $20,000. Click here to learn more and apply. The deadline to apply for this scholarship is March 20, 2026.
The EWRI committee will be hosting the 101st annual Freeman Lecture scheduled for April 7, 2026 at Northeastern University. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Grey Nearing, at Google Research from Zurich, Switzerland! The discussion is a hot topic on using AI for Global Flood Forecasting from Research to Operations and the Future of Early Warnings for ALL. To register for this event, click here.
Mark your calendars for June 11, 2026 for the 177th BSCES Annual Awards at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge. We plan to have Luciana Burdi, Chief Infrastructure Officer at Massachusetts Port Authority as our keynote speaker.
BSCES continues to thrive and engage with our members and local communities. It is a very exciting time to be a part of BSCES and ASCE and we hope to continue to grow our active membership and support our members and future generations of engineers!