It is a privilege and an honor to serve as the Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter President for 2015. I am confident that 2015 will be a great year for the chapter. Some of you may know me already from previous years as a member of SEAoT, but in case you don’t, I’ll give you a brief introduction.
I came to Houston in 2002 after completing my graduate studies at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I am a registered Professional Engineer in Texas and Louisiana and have worked as a restoration/forensic engineer for over 13 years. Last year I served as a Vice- President of the Chapter and contributed with providing quality programs and sponsors for the monthly meetings.
In 2014, we had great support from sponsors of our Newsletter and the monthly meetings. Eight of our nine monthly meeting were sponsored by different companies and we are very thankful for the contribution these sponsors made to our chapter. We had great diversity of topics and presenters in our monthly meeting in 2014 including off-shore engineering, structural restoration/ repair, structural foundation systems, legal issues pertaining to our profession, code related issues, failure analysis, and bridge structures.
We will continue to strive for providing interesting and diverse programs that will grab the interest of our members and non-members as well. The chapter is a healthy financial position, which allowed us to award two scholarships to two different recipients. Also, I am sincerely grateful for the significant involvement and contribution that the Texas A&M Student Chapter makes to our organization.
I am very excited about the opportunities and challenges that our chapter will face this year; especially organizing the State Conference which will be held in Houston this year. We are off to a great start in the planning of the State Conference by having a venue and date selected, and the process to gather sponsors and presenters is in full gear.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage our members to participate in our chapter in order to continue to grow our organization. As president of the chapter I speak for all board members that our goal is to leave the chapter in a better position that it was before our tenure. I wish everyone a happy and productive 2015. If you have any input or have any questions about our chapter, please don’t hesitate contacting me at houston@ seaot.org.
Al Bustamante
