Volume 6, Issue 2
March/April 2006

Richard MacDonald, CI President

CI has traditionally focused primarily on the development of Regional Seminars in the New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC areas. The first CI Regional Seminar was held January 18, 2002 in Los Angeles in conjunction with the Beavers Award dinner. A similar seminar was held in New York a short time later. The topics included construction claims analysis, the status of the surety and construction banking industry, and the status of the engineering contractor insurance marketplace. Later that same year, the first CI Mega Projects of the West Coast was held in San Francisco. The event highlighted projects that included the East Bay Bridge and Area Rapid Transit projects, the Golden Gate Bridge Retrofit, and Devil’s Slide Tunnel and Bridges. In 2003, Construction Institute Day was part of the ASCE National Conference. To date, CI has held four Mega Projects of the West Coast and three Mega Projects of the East Coast.

The time has arrived for CI to be more than just the Mega Projects. CI has churned out two new standards: Standard Construction Guidelines for Microtunneling (CI/ASCE 36-01) and Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data (CI/ASCE 38-02). CI/ASCE 38-02 is now referenced in at least 10 state DOTs. In fact, this issue of The Construction Zone highlights this standard in an article by Jim Anspach. In addition to standards, CI technical committees have developed other publications that include a report by the Social and Environmental Impacts on Construction Committee titled Rebuilding the World Trade Center, the Crane Safety on Construction Sites book by the Crane Safety Committee, and the Quality in the Constructed Project guide by the Construction Quality Management and Inspection Committee. Furthermore, a continuing education course has been developed based on the Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data and a course on preparing specifications for design-build projects is under review.

One of the issues I plan to pursue in my short term as president is that of better communication between the Board of Directors, its committees and the membership at large. As a first step, we will begin communicating more frequently using mechanisms such as The Construction Zone, the CI website, and email broadcasts that will give you virtually real time reports on what the Board of Directors is doing, and the decisions they make on your behalf. However, it takes two to have a conversation, so you are invited to contact us (at ci@asce.org or 703-295-6390) with your suggestions and opinions.