The civil engineering landscape changes in a blink.
You needn’t look further than the wildfires devastating Los Angeles neighborhoods this month for proof. The city’s plight came on suddenly, and the recovery will rely on quickly enacting civil engineering solutions.
The ASCE Board of Direction, meeting Jan. 17 in San Diego just south of the fires in L.A. County, voted to create two new committees designed to position the Society for exactly the kind of nimble, strategic action that current events call for.
“I think what I’m excited about with this move is that it’s looking forward to where we need to be as an organization and as a profession,” said ASCE President Feniosky A. Peña-Mora, Sc.D, P.E., NAS, CCM, F.CIOB, NAC, Dist.M.ASCE.
Both new committees were recommended by the Board Strategic Advisory Committee’s Task Committee on Reimagine ASCE after a year of work by the group on the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and needs for the future.
The Collaborative Innovation Team will include volunteer members and staff working to identify strategic priorities across ASCE initiatives and programs. Crucially, it will also ensure that those priorities are backed with the necessary resources to succeed, reporting to the board quarterly.
“The CIT is going to be looking at how we are prepared,” Peña-Mora said. “If you think of it like a scout that is looking ahead to the future to see what we need to do now to prepare or to better define the future – that’s the CIT.”
The second new committee will be charged with reforming the ASCE governance model. The board-approved recommendation specifically notes the need to evolve the board’s current composition as a representational board and the focus of its work into a group, achieving a strategic level of oversight and direction for the organization.
“These new groups will help identify what we need to do as an organization to prepare the profession for the future, how we should manage ourselves, how should we look forward to what is needed, and how we can contribute to it,” Peña-Mora said. “It’s particularly important when you think of the pace of change happening all around us – all the new technology, artificial intelligence, the digital transformation. We need to be constantly aware of what is happening and how those changes affect the profession and our organization.
“Sometimes organizations can be reactive. It’s almost like when someone has been knocking on the door several times, but you are not listening.
“At ASCE, we want to be thinking, ‘Who’s going to be at the door before they even start knocking? How can we do it ahead of time? How can we see trends before they even really impact things?’
“And I think those two committees will help us to be future-ready.”
Headed to the ballot
An amendment to the ASCE Constitution simplifying member grades will be put to a member vote in May on the election ballot.
The board voted on second reading to approve the proposed amendment that would consolidate the affiliate, associate, and member grades into one member grade: M.ASCE.
Two-thirds of voting members must now approve the amendment, which will be on the ASCE 2025 election ballot from May 1 through June 1.
BSAC, which recommended the change last year, has done and will continue to do outreach to better understand how ASCE members feel about the potential change. There is more information – including key points, background information, and two archived member webinars – at ASCE.org.
Work in progress
The Leadership Training Task Committee 2027, charged with examining the possibility of launching an ASCE flagship leadership conference in 2027, presented its final report to the board.
The group considered the possibility of combining in some form different existing Society programs, including the three annual Multi-Region Leadership Conferences, the Presidents and Governors Forum, and the Younger Member Leadership Symposium.
The task committee did not reach a consensus for a specific recommendation, and the board voted to approve moving the 2027 MRLC events from their traditional January-February dates to the autumn, so as not to conflict with the planned ASCE2027 event in March of that year.
Other meeting highlights
The ASCE Industry Leaders Council shared its stated four priorities for 2025:
- Building a sense of urgency about the deteriorating state of American infrastructure.
- Advancing the use of AI in the engineering profession by building and monetizing the ASCE Knowledge Base.
- Increasing the resiliency of American infrastructure to respond successfully to all forms of hazards.
- Expanding America’s civil engineering workforce to meet current and future needs.
The board received updates on membership, Society finances, and the ASCE Members of Society Advancing an Inclusive Culture’s partnership as co-principal investigator with REVIIS. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Raising Equity Values with the Inclusive Framework and ISO D&I Standards in Societies is a tool for organizations to measure diversity and inclusion more tangibly.
