Things are staying busy here at the South Carolina Society of Professional Engineers. As March is winding down, I can say we’ve been actively promoting the ethical, competent and licensed practice of engineering around the state.
If you missed it, we held our annual joint Winter Meeting with ACEC-SC in February. As we have done in the past few years, this meeting starts with an update of what SCSPE has been up to since our Annual Meeting in June. I was happy to look out in the crowd and see many of our members there. After hearing from SCSPE and ACEC-SC, attendees went on to either enjoy a full day session on leadership development or the environmental track.
SCSPE also had close to 15 members present at the State House on February 24, 2016, or as we like to call it South Carolina Engineers Day, to be recognized by the House of Representatives. Members stayed that day to help Joe S. Jones and me in the lobby. We were able to speak to 15 legislators about the issues engineers are facing, and encouraged them all to pass S.685/H.3928 (the Practice Act) as written.
Speaking of the Practice Act, Senate bill 685 is set for a Senate Labor Commerce & Industry (L.C.I) sub-committee hearing on April 13, 2016 at 10:00 in room 407. Please call and write the members of the Senate L.C.I Committee and ask them to pass S.685 as written. We’d also appreciate it if you would come to the hearing. We need enough engineers to pack the sub-committee room to show that this is important to our industry. We have a postcard ready to be mailed to all of the registered engineers in South Carolina, asking them to contact their legislators as well as those on the Senate L.C.I. committee asking them to pass S.685 as written.
While I’m talking about the legislature, H.4661, known as the pipe bill, may not be gone for the year. In the past two weeks, two Representatives have added their names as sponsors. I’ll continue to monitor this, and let members know if we need your help.
The engineering industry did suffer a blow on March 8, 2016 when South Carolina’s only PE in the legislature, Kenny Bingham, PE, announced he will not be seeking re-election.
We have appreciated the SCSPE members who have joined us for “Engineer Day at the State House.” We do have many Wednesday’s left, and would love for you to join us. This is painless, but your help goes a long way. We start at 10:00AM and head to the State House Lobby. We call out your House of Representatives member and your Senator and tell them what we are working on. We then try to call out as many members of the L.C.I committees and ask for their support on passage of S.685/H.3928. It ends with lunch and you’ll be back on your way in the early afternoon.
State MathCounts was hosted by Bridgestone Tire at its spectacular facility in Aiken on March 19, 2016. Mathletes were able to tour the facility after they finished competing. We have a good team heading to national this year. A special thank you to Bridgestone for hosting this year’s completion, they certainly rolled out the red carpet.
We hope to see you May 2, 2016 at our 2016 Disaster Assistance Program: Building Evaluator Training. This is a great program, and those who have taken it were the first able to report as volunteers after the 1,000 year flood this fall. Register today.
We also have our annual planning retreat the same week on May 6, 2016 at the SC Fire Academy. This is when we plan our next fiscal year, so we’d love your input. Attendance is free, but please let me know you plan on attending so we have room. Bring cash, as we will be dining at the cafeteria for lunch.
As the end of the year approaches, it is time to get our slate of officers and directors for next year. Chapters will be looking for new members for their boards, and we have couple of vacancies opening on the State Board. We hope you’ll say yes if you are asked to serve by our Nominating Committee.
As we think of next year, SCSPE is starting to work on its E-Directory so please go over to www.nspe.org , login and make sure you information is correct. We get the information for our directory from NSPE, so if it is not correct there, it will be wrong in our directory.
Mark your calendars and plan to attend the SC Engineering Conference & Trade Show at the Charleston Area Convention Center on June 23-26, 2016. Our Annual meeting takes place on Friday June 24, 2016 at the Annual Conference, so we hope to see you there.
Please let me know if there is anything SCSPE can do for you.
Thank you for your membership an all you do for the profession,
Adam B. Jones
Executive Director