It’s a week of new beginnings at ASCE.
The Society is set to install its new president and welcome a new Board of Direction at the annual business meeting, Tuesday at the ASCE 2022 Convention in Anaheim, California.
And the organization has a new strategic plan, effective immediately after the board voted to approve the document, Oct. 22 at its quarterly meeting, also in Anaheim.
“We as engineers applied our concepts, staff applied their knowledge, and we came up with a strategic plan that I think we all can be proud of,” said ASCE 2022 President Dennis D. Truax, Ph.D., P.E., DEE, D.WRE, F.ASCE.
This strategic plan supersedes the previous edition, which went into effect in 2018. The Board Strategic Advisory Committee developed the plan over the last six months with input from the entire Board of Direction, staff leadership, and ASCE members.
The new iteration begins by defining the stakeholders: membership, the profession, and society.
The plan distills the organizational strategy into six action verbs: innovate, advocate, inspire, stimulate, magnify, and deliver.
The strategic plan is separated into two main sections – strategic shifts and strategic objectives – with the six action verbs used to highlight specifics under each. “Innovate” and “Advocate” apply to societal shifts and objectives; “Inspire” and “Stimulate” to the profession; “Magnify” and “Deliver” to ASCE membership.
“We were very deliberate to be concise and precise on what we wanted to accomplish,” said Feniosky A. Pena-Mora, P.E., F.ASCE, NAC, at-large director on ASCE’s Board of Direction and chair of BSAC charged with developing the strategic plan. “We were very intentional to make the plan very crisp, very clear.”
The strategic shifts and objectives work together in shaping ASCE’s strategy. The shifts are drivers of change that generate new objectives for the organization.
“Those shifts are the impetus for the work we’re doing,” Pena-Mora said. “And in order to respond to those shifts, we need to rethink how we’re doing what we do.”
The plan emphasizes member value and a diverse, engaged civil engineering community. It also focuses on sustainable, resilient, future-ready infrastructure, while putting ASCE members and the civil engineering profession at the forefront of that work.
“I’m very excited about how the strategic plan focuses on ensuring civil engineers’ prominence in the infrastructure domain, Pena-Mora said. “We are the experts. We are the leaders.
“Now, of course, that does not mean that other professions don’t have something to contribute. We want this plan to help us create a bigger tent. At the end of the day, we want to have sustainable infrastructure. Anyone who can contribute to that goal, we want them to see ASCE as their home.”
Download the new ASCE Strategic Plan.
The next step of course is implementation. BSAC, while developing the strategic plan, also laid out a series of metrics for the plan. Each strategic objective has what they’re calling action key performance indicators (outcomes ASCE can control) and impact key performance indicators (how outcomes from ASCE initiatives have affected the public, the profession, and membership).
The board also approved the creation of a new committee to help implement the strategic plan in ASCE’s operations and activities.
“For a strategic plan to be effective, it needs to be accountable,” Truax said. “It needs to have performance metrics; it needs to be clear; it needs to something people can understand and support.
“This plan is all of that. This plan is fully implementable and provides accountability.”
Learn more about and read the entire ASCE strategic plan.
