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Goals For 2021-2022 ACEC/MW Chair

Incoming ACEC/MW Chair Jim Hoffman shared his vision and goals for the 2021-2022 member year during our Annual Business Meeting on June 8, 2021.
First, let me thank Linda Bauer Darr, Robin Greenleaf, and the entire National Board for all of their support and for what they do to promote and advocate for our engineering profession. I have really enjoyed the renewed energy that Linda has brought ACEC National and the increase to ACEC's brand as thought leaders and being trusted advisors. I have appreciated Robin's participation in the ACEC National's Small Firms Coalition (SFC) events over the past year and her presence at ACEC/MW's Annual Business Meeting. I also want to thank Steve Hall for his continued support of ACEC/MW and ACEC National's Federal Agencies and Programs Advocacy (FAPA) Committee and SFC. I look forward to working with ACEC National this year. Thank you for valuing inclusion and diversity in the association. At Metropolitan Washington we are committed to following and modeling these values. 

Second, I want to thank Pedro Capestany for his leadership this past year and for all that he has done over the many years as a member and volunteer of the ACEC/MW Board and as a Committee Chair. It has been a pleasure working with him during his Presidency. We made a lot of great advances for the association, and I look forward to continuing the hard work he started. 
 
Third, I would like to thank Dick Saslaw, Majority Leader of the Senate of Virginia, for joining us at our Annual Business Meeting. Senator Saslaw represents Virginia's District 35. We appreciate his leadership in the Senate, and his willingness to support paying for infrastructure, such as the gas tax, and help leading the 2018 funding package that gave Metro a dedicated funding source for first time.  Senator Saslaw's efforts have been instrumental to the engineering industry, and we were honored to recognize him as our Elected Official of the Year.
 
Just a little bit about me. I have been married for 30 years to my wife Patti and we have two sons. One graduated from the University of Maryland's Fire Protection Engineering Program and the other is attending George Mason University's Civil Engineering Program. I have known three employers in my life: McDonalds, the US Army, and Summer Consultants. I was an Engineering Officer with the 317th Engineer Battalion (Combat Mechanized) where engineering was installing obstacles or breaching obstacles under fire. I am President of Summer Consultants, a mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection engineering and commissioning firm. We are active in the federal sector and on the Facilities Committee within ACEC/MW. We are active with ACEC National. I am also the Chair for ACEC National's Federal Agencies and Programs Advocacy Committee, and I am on the Executive Committee for ACEC National's Small Firms Coalition.
 
The 2021-2022 year is exciting as we expect to return to a new normal. The pandemic challenged us to learn a lot of new skills. We intend to take the best ideas moving forward and to provide hybrid events. 

Overall, our focus will be to continue to provide value to our members, our clients, and to continue to improve and not rest on our past performance.

We want ACEC/MW to be the “go to” resource for member firms, our clients, and elected officials for issues that impact our industry, and for them to seek counsel and guidance from us.  We want to be a trusted partner with them to advance the work we do. I am excited to work with our new Board and our committees to make the 2021-2022 member year an amazing year. They are a great group of dedicated professionals to our association and to our industry. Our challenge this year is to balance new activities and solidify activities introduced in the last two years. 

Implement our new Strategic Plan. Our new plan was built off of the ACEC National 2019 Strategic Plan. The three goals are: Educate, Engage and Advocate. Four key initiatives tied to our strategic plan are:
  1. Establish an Emerging Leaders Program to educate and engage young members. My hope is that the Emerging Leaders Program will help combat the brain drain of talent from the Metropolitan Washington Region due to the high cost of living.
  2. Begin a Small Business Committee. Arpan Patel will be the Committee Chair and Tandrumn Reid will be the Vice Chair. We are excited to see this committee blossom.
  3. Create a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. We are blessed with diverse members and we should be a model of diversity and inclusion.
  4. Increase our Advocacy. The local DC PAC is nearly in place, and we need to make sure that we are being heard and representing our issues where it matters in the District of Columbia.  DC is the center of our Metro Area footprint. We are looking forward to using this tool along with the efforts of our Legislative Committee to become more active players in the affairs of the District. In addition, we want to ensure we are good partners with ACEC/MD and ACEC/VA and support the advocacy of these sister member organizations to amplify the voices of engineers.
Solidification of Activities
  1. Deliver value and thereby expand our membership.
  2. Collaborate: Look for opportunities to collaborate with our sister associations ACEC/MD and ACEC/VA, and other organizations in our fields. 
  3. Committees: We continue to build our committees and evaluate new committees such as Dry Utilities.
  4. Programs: Continue to offer vibrant programs, to include an ACEC/MW annual conference.
  5. We will evaluate increasing non-dues revenue through online training and business seminars.
  6. Scholarships: Continue to build the endowment and solidify a sustainable scholarship program for young professionals who are the future of our industry. We intend to have two golf events this coming member year, which begins on July 1: the revenue from the fall event will be dedicated to the scholarships, and 50% of the spring event revenue will go to student scholarships.

To close out, I again want to thank all of those that participate faithfully in our organization. I look forward to seeing everyone at our upcoming events:
  • August 26 – Water Wastewater Luncheon
  • September 23 – MDOT Luncheon
  • October 13 – ACEC/MW Scholarship Golf Tournament
  • December 8 – Engineering Excellence Awards Gala & Holiday Party
New Board, let's get to work!



Jim Hoffman is President of Summer Consultants, Inc., a small business providing mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection engineering and commissioning services for the design of government, higher institutional and historic facility projects. Jim is a licensed mechanical engineer with over 30 years of design and consulting experience including heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, steam, plumbing, and automatic temperature control systems. Jim holds a Bachelor of Architectural Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and a Masters of Engineering Management from The George Washington University. He is a LEED accredited professional, a Certified Energy Manager, and a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). Jim is also a member of ACEC Metropolitan Washington, currently serving as President Elect on the Board of Directors.

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