January 2023 From the President’s Keyboard: PEs, We Need Your Help!

Happy New Year to all ASPE members. I hope everyone had a great holiday and enjoyed some quality time with family. It’s now 2023 and back-to-work time. That includes your ASPE Board of Directors.

—We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to bring you this special report:

PEs, We Need Your Help!

This column is typically addressed to our entire membership, but please permit me to focus on a narrower segment of our ASPE membership for now. The specific audience I’d like to address is the one composed of registered Professional Engineers (PEs).

ASPE’s Professional Engineer Working Group (PEWG) has been hard at work for a number of years to have a plumbing option included within the Mechanical discipline of the Principles and Practice of Engineering examination. In simpler terms, that’s the Part 2 exam for becoming a licensed PE. With the guidance and drive of Co-Chairs David Dexter, FNSPE, FASPE, CPD, CPI, LEED BD+C, PE, and Ronald Bartley, PE, CPD, CPI/CPE, FASPE, and the legwork of its members, the PEWG has complied with the stringent requirements of NCEES and gotten the issue close to the finish line.

The next hurdle is the PAKS, or Professional Activities and Knowledge Study, which is a survey that NCEES sends to a cross-section of licensed PEs when updating their exam content. This survey is critical because if we miss the current cycle, it is likely that NCEES’ consideration to add a plumbing option to the Mechanical suite of exams gets bumped out another eight years. The hard-fought goal of the PEWG and ASPE leadership that is now so close would slip away.

If you are a licensed PE and an ASPE member, you were invited to complete the NCEES PAKS survey. You should have received a link for the survey via an email from ASPE. You also have received reminders from Dave Dexter via ASPE Connect. Those who completed the survey were asked to inform us, and as of this writing, the confirmation responses indicate that a relatively low number of our PE members has completed the survey.

I am now adding my own impassioned appeal to all of our PEs who have yet to respond. Maybe you have completed the survey; please take the time to email Gretchen Pienta and let her know that you have. If you still need to complete the survey, please do so, and then email Gretchen ([email protected]). Keep in mind that NCEES has established a deadline of March 15, 2023 for their PAKS survey. We can’t miss this window to get the plumbing option added to the Mechanical exam.

We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

We will have our first face-to-face Board meeting since the post-Convention meeting the first weekend in February. We have conducted several Board calls and addressed some of our agenda items, but the quarterly meetings are where the in-depth work happens. We are working on additional items to add to that agenda. If you have anything you’d like the Board of Directors to consider, please email me, Executive Director/CEO Billy Smith, FASPE, or your Region Director with your suggestions/concerns. We do like to hear from you to make sure that we are working in your best interests. All of our email addresses can be found at aspe.org.

I’d like to remind anyone interested in serving on one of the Society’s committees to go to the ASPE website and fill out an application. Incidentally, an application needs to be completed whether you’ve served on a committee previously or not. We would like to have all applications received in advance of our February Board meeting. If you are willing to contribute, we can use your help.

Our MedGas Workshop for the ASSE 6060 exam has been well received and continues to sell out. The next session is February 23–26 in Irvine, California and hosted by GF Piping Systems. If you are interested in attending, visit ASPE’s website to register. Instructor Mark Allen is an acknowledged expert in the field and helps step attendees through the 32 hours of class professionally and effectively. If you work in healthcare and need to earn the ASSE 6060 certification, Mark will help you prepare for the exam.

Further down the road, pencil in the ASPE Leadership Summit, scheduled for June 22–25 at the Westin Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois. This year, instead of each Region having its own meeting, we will gather collectively at the Leadership Summit to exchange ideas live and in person. We’d like to have one representative from every ASPE Chapter in attendance, so keep that on your radar.

Since we’re talking calendars, also keep the 2023 Tech Symposium dates in mind. That will be in Bellevue, Washington from September 28 to October 1. The Education Committee will be working to evaluate speaker presentations and set up a schedule of technical sessions for a wide range of design interests and experience.

I will sign off for this month. Again, have a happy and successful 2023. Let’s get out there and get it done.

One final reminder to our PEs: please complete the PAKS survey and check in with Gretchen when you have.

Thanks to all for reading this.

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