The more than 1,000 attendees at the recent 2022 Fall Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado, represented an all-time high for Fall Conference attendance, breaking the previous high set in 2018 in Boston.
ACEC President and CEO Linda Bauer Darr greeted attendees with positive economic news about the industry, despite the impact of rising inflation and rumors of a looming recession.
“As an industry, we fear the headwinds we are beginning to face and the looming prospect of a recession, yet our companies are doing well, and wages are up,” she said. “This growth reflects the overall optimism I hear from so many of you.”
She cautioned, however, there are increasing concerns about the tight labor market. She pointed to a recent ACEC Research Institute Economic Sentiment Study which found that 51 percent of surveyed firms have turned down work over the past three months due to workforce shortages.
“There is also real concern about the inability of many of our firms to incorporate the cost of inflation into their overall project costs with their clients,” Darr said.
Conference highlights included:
Jon Gray, chief economist of the ACEC Research Institute, and Joe Bates, a research consultant for the Institute, introduced an optimistic industry-wide economic assessment and forecast at the 2022 Fall Conference.
“We had a very good year, the engineering and design services industry, rebounding from the pandemic in 2021,” Gray said during the joint Conference presentation.
Results show that jobs and total industry employment are up just over 2 percent year over last year. This increase translates to 1.53 million jobs in 2021, compared to 1.5 million in 2020.
“I think that a couple of the numbers that jump out at me… are that we have a lot of really good-paying jobs,” Bates said. “And we maintained that through the pandemic. We snapped back from the recession.”
Gray said that the industry should expect 11 percent in nominal output (revenue) in 2022. Growth is expected to continue over the horizon of the forecast, but that growth will slow down. For instance, the total forecast indicates that growth will slow to 6.1 percent in 2023, and 2 percent in 2027.
“Inflation is really taking a bite out of revenue right now,” Gray noted.
Following ACEC Research Institute’s presentation on their annual economic outlook, leaders of three member firms weighed in on their specific concerns regarding future economic conditions and the impacts of inflation, worker shortages, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and a looming recession.
Moderated by Research Institute Chair John Carrato, panel participants included Alyson Watson, CEO of Woodard & Curran in Portland, Maine; Keith Foxx, principal of FOXXSTEM in Washington, D.C.; and Mitch Simpler, managing partner emeritus of Jaros, Baum & Bolles in New York.
Jeb Brooks joined the Engineering Influence podcast live from ACEC’s 2022 Fall Conference to discusses the history of the Brooks Act, its importance for public safety, and the work of the Jack Brooks Foundation, which is working to keep the legacy of Congressman Brooks alive. Listen to the conversation here: https://acecnational.podbean.com/e/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-brooks-act/
Carrato spared no time in diving into the discussions by asking a very pointed question: “If we have a recession in the U.S., do you think it would affect the engineering and design services industry, and what, if anything, is your firm doing to plan for the potential of a recession?”
“My firm is all private sector, so a recession for us will have significant impacts because our clients have already started throttling back,” noted Simpler. “Private sector firms rely on private sector developers and businesses to provide our business. But, when a recession starts to loom, they start reducing the amount of money they spend. They start slowing projects down.”
Watson noted that her firm has both public and private sector clients. “In the private sector, we are seeing some budget contractions,” she said. “Whether a recession will be significant, some of our clients will cut back on their budgets.”
Keith Foxx, who called himself a newcomer to such a member firm leader panel, was more bullish on the economic future and especially on the IIJA. “We just see good things for the next 10 years,” Foxx said. “The huge amount of funding that we see from IIJA will support small businesses in this industry. It seems like it’s trickling, but it’s coming.”
Travis Mills, a self-described joker who had “one bad day at work,” eventually turned that bad day into an inspirational life purpose—helping other veterans and their families find their way back from injury and survival to lives filled with purpose and joy.
The retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant of the 82nd Airborne and founder of the Travis Mills Foundation for Veterans is one of only five quadruple amputees from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nonetheless, he epitomizes resilience and the fact that human capability isn’t limited by one’s physique, but only by the remarkable power an attitude can have upon an outcome. Mills told the Fall Conference audience about his third deployment, just four days shy of his 25th birthday, to Afghanistan when he set his 120-pound pack on an improvised explosive device. Suddenly his world spun sickeningly out of control.
But despite his own catastrophic injuries, his immediate concern was the fate of the soldiers on his team. That focus has never left. He used wit and stubbornness to regularly defy the odds and carry him through grueling months of rehabilitation and therapy.
His efforts led to the creation of the Travis Mills Foundation for Veterans, which provides injured veterans and their families an all-inclusive, all-expenses paid, and barrier-free vacation to Maine. It’s there they spend time with Mills and his family, participate in adaptive activities, bond with other veteran families, and enjoy much-needed rest and relaxation in Maine’s great outdoors.
“We want them to know ‘You’re not alone.’ Do not live life on the sidelines,” he said.
The advice he gives other veterans, and anyone facing adversity, is to set goals and make them concrete. “Don’t be afraid to push yourself,” he said. “I was up on short legs just shy of two months because I had no internal injuries. It hurt like hell, but that’s when I realized that if I could do this, then anything is possible.”
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a sitting board member of the multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Pfizer, delivered a keynote speech that tapped into a common language among technical professions of engineering and design, and medicine and biotechnology.
Her message was clear: “Turn innovation into action.”
“I love engineers because they get things done,” she said. Desmond-Hellmann shared stories from her career about innovations that she was directly involved in. Once those innovations were implemented, the lives of millions of people throughout the world were improved.
With a background in oncology, she was involved in the development of the drug trastuzumab, sold under the brand name of Herceptin. The drug works to stop HER2-positive breast cancer cells from growing. According to the American Cancer Society, HER2 is a protein that helps breast cancer cells grow quickly. Breast cancers that are HER2-negative grow slower, but HER2-positive cancers are more likely to respond to treatment, including drugs such as Herceptin.
Check out the Engineering Influence podcasts from the 2022 ACEC Fall Conference, including keynote speakers, award recipients, and Coalition leaders. Listen to all conversations here:
https://acecnational.podbean.com/page/1/
https://acecnational.podbean.com/page/2/
State or Local Government Sector
Illinois Department of Transportation, Springfield, Illinois
QBS Merit Award
Town of Smithfield, Rhode Island
The winners of this year’s PAC Sweepstakes: Peter Strub of TranSystems in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, won the $10,000 Grand Prize. Travis Deane of Shannon and Wilson in Burbank, California, and Campbell Wallace of ACEC New York in Albany, New York, each won $5,000. Allison Sambol of Felsburg Holt & Ullevig in Omaha, Nebraska, and Bryan Bross of Klingner & Associates in Burlington, Iowa, each won $2,500.
Ten people won $1,000 prizes: Roman Grijalva of BGE in Austin, Texas; Brian Coltharp of Freese and Nichols in Fort Worth, Texas; Brian Klaes of Moreno Cardenas in El Paso, Texas; William Wilson of Chen Moore and Associates in Jacksonville, Florida; Jim Honea of Jacobs Engineering Group in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Adam Terronez of BSK Associates in Bakersfield, California; Keith London of Kennedy Jenks in Murrieta, California; Karen Tatman of Quincy Engineering in Salem, Oregon; Chuck Christiansen of Wood, Patel & Associates in Phoenix, Arizona; and Michael Statz of MSA Professional Services in Madison, Wisconsin.
Developed when Desmond-Hellmann led the clinical group at Genentech, the Herceptin treatment soon became one of the most groundbreaking breast cancer treatments currently available on the U.S. market.
“The best thing for me is the thousands of hours, and the hundreds of thousands of women who, instead of the conversation I used to have with them about the impact of HER2, is now that we have something for that…As a biotech person, that’s the best thing ever. That’s what I love about innovation.”
ACEC honored two longtime Council advocates, Jack Hand and Kenny Smith, as Chair Emeritus Award winners during the annual 2022 Fall Conference Awards Luncheon.
Selected by past Chair Emeritus Award winners, the annual award recognizes an individual or individuals who have demonstrated exemplary service to the Council, its member firms, and the industry. ACEC Chair Art Barrett presented the 2022 Chair Emeritus Awards.
“These two award winners and ACEC leaders helped to set the strategic vision for ACEC that’s at the core of ACEC’s success and our strategic plan goal related to vibrant member engagement,” said Barrett.
Hand, the retired chairman and CEO of POWER Engineers and currently with River House Management Consulting, has dedicated years of service to making ACEC the political voice for the engineering industry.
“This is a very special and a very unexpected honor,” Hand said in his remarks accepting the award. “Thank you, ACEC, and the individual members who made this happen.”
Smith, CEO of Louisiana-based T. Baker Smith, has nearly three decades of service to ACEC. “Wow, I am honored and truly humbled to receive this award,” Smith said. “I want to thank ACEC of Louisiana for always backing me up…ACEC is all about making things happen.”
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