Home Secretary's Corner Secretary’s Corner – May 2019 – Joshua White

Secretary’s Corner – May 2019 – Joshua White

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During our last board meeting, we discussed many upcoming changes you should expect to see in the coming months. These changes are primarily the result of the survey that we sent out earlier in the year (we appreciate all of your feedback to this survey!).

As briefly summarized in our article posted here from our recent survey, the primary reasons survey respondents missed our monthly meetings were the desire for: 1) a more convenient time, 2) more interesting topics, and 3) networking opportunities with contractors and engineers. To address the meeting time, we are going to commit to lunch meetings for the foreseeable future. This will begin with our May 16th meeting from 11:30AM to 1PM, which will be held at the Hess Club. Future meeting times/locations will be provided via the newsletter.

To improve networking opportunities, we are introducing at least two additional events: SEAoT Happy Hours (we’ll task someone with developing a cleverer name later…) and annual social outings. Tentatively, we are looking to have our first happy hour at the end of May (more details to come), and a Top Golf Networking event on November 7.

As always, we are looking to provide more interesting topics for our chapter, and your survey results provided us with valuable information for planning.

Speaking of interesting topics, April’s meeting was well attended to hear Mr. Dean Rutila from SGH discuss “Enclosure Engineering”. Enclosure engineers face different challenges from structural engineers. Much of their job is keeping the outside environment out of a building, and the desired inside environment in. The irregularity of building geometry, the requirement for penetrations in below-grade waterproofing, the highly desirable glass facades that are less than perfect insulators and the move to greener roofs all convolve and sometimes result in a sieve rather than a barrier to environmental transfer. Through new design and investigation examples, Mr. Rutila described these challenges and offered solutions from his 40 years of experience.  Thanks to Emily McCarthy for providing this summary, as I was unable to attend!

We look forward to seeing you at our lunchtime meeting on May 16th, as we hear David Eastwood with Geotech Engineering and Testing (GET) present on a geo-forensic investigation of a storage dome collapse in Louisiana.