2007 Leadership Speech

Remarks of ASCE President-elect

David Mongan P.E., F.ASCE

Driving here, I couldn’t help but notice all the construction. This construction reminds me of the story of a geotechnical engineer.  He was out drilling some holes and in one of the samples, he uncovered this ancient flask.  He wipes it off and has some unknown foreign inscription and he takes the proverbial cork out of the bottle.  Sure enough, out pops a genie.  The geotechnical engineer asks if he will get his three wishes.  The genie says yes, you can have three wishes.  Unfortunately, they can’t be things like world peace, be the richest person in the world, but you can get three wishes.  There is another catch.  Whatever you wish for, your attorney is going to get double the amount.  The geotechnical engineer thought for a while and said, well, my attorney has always gotten rich off of me in the past, so why should this be different.  I would like to have a new Ferrari.  The genie hands the engineer the keys to a new Ferrari.  He says that this is parked in your driveway, and in your lawyer’s driveway is parked two new Ferraris.  The engineer thought a little longer and said, I have always wanted a chateau in the south of France.  That’s what I want.  The genie produces a deed to a chateau in the south of France and says of course you remember that your attorney now has two chateaus in the south of France.  The engineer thinks awhile for his third wish and he says to the genie, beat me half to death.

As I was thinking about running for president elect, I decided I wanted to know more about the presidents that preceded me.  I spent a day at ASCE headquarters reviewing the files on all the presidents since 1852.  I would like to share some of my findings.  Our initial presidents, James Laurie and James Kirkwood were not Native Americans, but were born in Edinborough Scotland.  In 1859 we had the first us born president, William McAlpine.  The first attorney, who is also an engineer, to become president was in 1870, Alfred Craven.  In 1908, our first Canadian born president was Charles McDonald.  It was not until 1913, some 61 years after the founding, that we had our first president who was from west of the Mississippi, George Swain from San Francisco. 

I was curious as to how many presidents were from Maryland, or at least called Maryland their home.  There are a number who spent some time in Maryland, but prior to me, only two who called Maryland home.  That was Delon Hampton who in 2000 also became ASCE’s first African American president.  In 1943, Ezra Whitman from Baltimore was elected president.  Prior to me, he was the only member of the Maryland Section to become president.  In 2005 ASCE had its first woman president Patricia Galloway.  Some of you know that I did not intend to be an engineer.  I started my college career wanting to become a lawyer and I attended Washington and Lee University.  I never dreamed that there would have been another person who attended or Graduated from Washington and Lee University to have become a president of ASCE.  My research proved me wrong.  In 1967, while I was at Washington and Lee University, a Mr. Earl Andrews, who had attended in 1923, was president of ASCE, and by another stroke of coincidence, Mr. Andrews lived just across the Maryland line in West Virginia, about 30 miles from where I grew up.  Unfortunately, Mr. Andrews and I never had the pleasure of meeting.

My research also uncovered some other interesting facts.  In 1918, the society had a committee identified significant social and economic conditions that are leading to new alignments within elements of our society.  These conditions are affecting deeply the profession of engineering and its services to society and its very relationships to communities and nations and in its internal organization.  Specific recommendations included:

• Activities of students and younger engineers must be encouraged.
• Greater emphasis needs to be given to technical activities, research and standards.
• New emphasis must be given to such functions in the public affairs sector, such as ethics, engineering education, licensure, publicity, legislation, natural resource development, service to the community, state and nation.

The board just adopted a new ASCE Mission Statement which provides essential value to our members, their careers, our partners and the public, ASCE will:

1. Facilitate the advancement of technology,

2. Encourage and provide the tools for lifelong learning,

3. Promote professionalism and the profession,

4. Develop and support civil engineering leadership, and

5. Advocate infrastructure and environmental stewardship.

Obviously it seems that no matter how much things change, they tend to always stay the same. 

As some of you know, I chaired a committee to convene a Summit on the Future of the Civil Engineering profession. To begin the summit, our dinner speaker was Michael Rogers, a past columnist for Newsweek.  He gave us insight on a number of innovations and their impact on society.  He presented an anecdote of one of his friends who is an engineer for Google, who obviously has a vast understanding of the internet.  His friend can not understand his 14 years old son, who every night finishes dinner and goes upstairs to play a massively parallel online game with his best friend who lives next door and is upstairs in his bedroom playing right along.  Each evening and on weekends, the two are shoulder to shoulder in the online world talking to each other through microphones and earpieces.  They go to different schools and actually rarely ever see each other in real life.  Nonetheless, they consider each other best friends.  This clearly has a major impact on our succeeding generation, the ability to form meaningful virtual relationships and successful virtual collaborations that for most intents and purposes are just as substantial as those we have had in the real world.  Another example he cited was when he was Editor and General Manager of Newsweek.com.  He wanted to make sure for a particular advertiser, that certain aspects  their ad were chronologically accurate, and wondering whether or not displays could be set from signals from the atomic clock in Colorado.  His programmer said, “Well that is kind of tricky.  Can I hire a freelancer?”  Mr. Rogers said sure.  A few weeks later he came back with the ad and it worked beautifully and it was done elegantly.  Mr. Rodgers asked to meet the person who did this.  Well, the programmer hesitated, I’m not sure that is possible.  He lives in Moscow.  It is this kind of virtual world in which we are now living. 

We began the next day with a presentation by Ralph Peterson, the Chairman and CEO of CH2MHilll, on the topic of globalization. He identified five global forces:

• Communication and information technology serving as a profound driver of global business and economic change.
• Population and demographic shifts affecting our global civil engineering practice.
• Expanding trade and the emergence of democratized market economies accompanied by heightened security concerns.
• World wide industry and organization consolidation.
• Natural resource and environmental limitations affecting global growth and infrastructure.

Next we had a presentation by John Voeller, who is the senior vice president of Black and Veatch and is currently serving in the president’s office of science and technology.  Mr. Voeller felt that there is a general tendency to assume a high technology or Buck Rogers’ aspect of the future.  He felt that even with important technology elements of the civil engineering future, most of those who attempt to predict these outcomes have a checkered track record.  He felt that there are four roles relative to technology, the creator, repair person, the integrator and innovator.  He believes that civil engineers of tomorrow will not only have to change their knowledge skills, teammates and tools, but they will have to be different, if not aggressive, about eliminating the desire to do what they have done in the past - to accept what is provided as all that can be done -  is to succumb to the limited imaginations of those who provide equipment, materials and service and to suffer margins and market methods that prevent reinvestment for self improvement and optimization. 

Our final keynote presenter was Henry (Hank) Hatch, Lt. General retired from the corps of engineers.  Mr. Hatch spoke on leadership.  He cited Herbert Hoover’s quote about engineering that “it is a great profession.  There is a fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge...To a plan on paper...Then it moves to realization and stone or metal or energy.  Then it brings jobs and homes...Then it develops a standard of living and adds to the comforts of life.  That is engineer’s high privilege.”  Hank felt that over his career, he has seen the need for civil engineers to reestablish themselves in the public and private process that decided the what, the why and the where of what we should do.  Echoing Rich Reingard’s theme in his book “Forks in the Road,” he felt that we need to:

1. Increase public awareness, 

2. Attract increasingly diverse youngsters to science and engineering,

3.  Influence public and private sector decisions that promote prudent investment in infrastructure, and

4. Promote balance in decision making  to ensure that development is economically, socially, politically, culturally, and environmentally sustainable as well as technically. 

The summit held last June has produced a draft report which is in various levels of circulation.  The vision that we identified is:

• The civil engineer will be entrusted by society to create a sustainable world and enhance the global quality of life.  We believe that civil engineers must work collectively, collaboratively and ethically and that they must be master planners, designers, constructors and operators of the build environment. 
• They also must be the stewards of the natural environment and its resources.  They need to be innovators and integrators of ideas in technology. 
• They need to be managers of risk and uncertainty caused by natural events, accidents and other threats. 
• They need to be leaders in discussions and decisions shaping public, environmental and infrastructure policy. 

For our profession to attain this aspirational vision, a number of things must occur.  First, we must face the challenges of our workforce.  I think this is the main challenge facing our profession.  While enrollments in civil engineering are at a level not seen in almost 30 years, we still need more competent, qualified civil engineers.  We also need a greater diversity within the civil engineering profession.  Women enrollment in civil engineering has steadily declined since 1995.  African-American and other underrepresented groups’ enrollment is remaining flat.  We must find ways to encourage more women, African Americans and other underrepresented groups into engineering.  This needs to start in our elementary, middle and high schools.  We have had a number of reports, the most recent of which was “Rising above the Gathering Storm” by the National Academy of Engineering.  We must work to implement those recommendations.  We must have more science, technology, engineering and math education in our schools.  We are partnering with our other sister societies through the Extraordinary Women’s project on expanded career guidance and outreach.  We are also beginning a diversity manual that will be the compilation of “best practices” in improving, fostering and maintaining workforce diversity.  ASCE is also working on a program geared to the middle school patterned after a very successful program in New York City, but we must do more.

The second issue focuses on infrastructural renewal.  We have done an excellent job with our infrastructural report card.  But now is the time to engage our policy makers in a more effective manner.  We must present solutions to our infrastructure problems, not just continue to cry wolf.  These solutions can’t simply be throwing more money at the problem.  We have to come up with innovative solutions that are cost effective.  ASCE recently transitioned the Civil Engineering Research Foundation into a new organization called the Civil Engineering Forum for Innovation.  The new forum will bring together leaders from industry, academia and government to define realistic options and progressive strategies to strengthen the profession and industry through technical innovation and public policy.   One of the group's first tasks will be to proactively encourage innovation to renew the nation's decaying infrastructure. CEFI will begin by developing a strategic roadmap to rebuild infrastructure with emphasis on advancing adoption of technology, improving project performance, and increasing industry productivity in partnership with government entities.

We also need to have a greater engagement of our policy makers.  A way to accomplish this would be to expand our lobbying efforts.  This will require a change in our organizational structure that will permit a greater expenditure on lobbying and perhaps the creation of a PAC.

An essential element necessary to achieve our vision is having the public’s trust.  ASCE has a number of initiatives that address the concern of gaining the people’s trust.  Clearly, our Policy Statement 465 which deals with ‘Academic Prerequisites for Licensure and Practice at the Professional Level’ will have a profound impact on the quality of civil engineering and in turn, the statute of civil engineering in our community.  We are progressing very much ahead of schedule.  The recent passage by NCEES of language modifying the model law to require 30 additional credit hours prior to licensure is a major step.  We are now embarking upon working in various states to actually change the individual laws of the 55 jurisdictions that control licensure in this country.  This spring we will publish the second edition of the body of knowledge.  The body of knowledge based upon the vision of the civil engineer in 2025 is the foundation identifying the knowledge, skills and attitudes that civil engineers must have to practice at the professional level.  The committee is also working on further defining the experience required in order to obtain professional license.  Various colleges and universities are modifying and identifying curricula that better addressed the body of knowledge.

ASCE just recently certified its first class of BSC Building Security Certified Professionals.  Soon we will be able to certify buildings with various security ratings similar to the LEED ratings associated with the US Green Building Council. 

ASCE has also undertaken its first program for voluntary post-licensure specialty certification under the direction of the Civil Engineering Certification, Inc.  This program is a Diplomate, Water Resources Engineer specialty certification run by the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers.  The Diplomate credentials require:

• Active engagement in water resources engineering
• Advanced education consistent with ASCE policy 465.
• 10+ year’s professional experience in water resources engineering.
• Valid professional engineering licensure.
• Strong ethics and
• Passing an oral examination.

ASCE’s External Review Panel has received high praise from all sectors.  After more than a year of extensive independent review, the external review panel expressed overall satisfaction that the technical competency and findings of the draft final version of the US Army Corps of Engineers Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force report on the performance of the New Orleans hurricane protection system during hurricane Katrina.  The ERP has identified ten major lessons learned.  ASCE is now continuing that effort to apply those lessons learned, to not just the actual design of projects, but to the whole basic underlying philosophy of design.  We hope to create a document that currently has a working title of “planning, design, oversight and sustainability of large engineered works - a manual of practice.” I recently met with outgoing Chief of Engineers, General Strock.  He indicated that this partnership between the corps and ASCE is only the beginning of opportunities for continued external review of corps projects.

It was 34 years ago last year that man last set foot on the moon.  Some of you were old enough to remember the launching of Sputnik in 1957.  I’m a product of the space race, like some of you.  I remember very well watching Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon and watching with fear and hope that Apollo 13 would return safety.  Sputnik and our determination to put a man on the moon by the end of the 60s launched a host of technological advances and developments from which we are still reaping the benefits today.  We need to find another goal for America that can rekindle the spirit that existed in the 60s.  We need to find that spark that will return and refocus interest in science, technology, engineering and math education.  I’m not certain what it is, but all of us need to be searching and helping to find it.