There has been a recurring theme in my President’s message: change is constant.  In fact, our chapter had a recent change in administrative management companies.  For those of you who may not be familiar with that program, we hire a firm to help us manage our administrative services.  The firm we are now working with is IntrinXec Management Inc.; the President is Jaime Nolan, CAE.  She was co-owner of Synergy Resource Group, which is the firm we originally worked with; she left for personal reasons and later started her own firm.  Because of that experience, Jaime is very familiar with our chapter and our procedures.  In addition, Jaime recently hired Luann Bartley and Sharon Noble from Synergy, so we really are working with a team of experienced people.  We feel very fortunate that this change went as well as it did.  We rely on our administrator for some very important tasks, like sending meeting announcements. 

We have two excellent meetings coming up.  In January we will be discussing the Adoption of the 2006 IBC (again with the changes).  We have an excellent speaker, Gerald Norman, who will provide insight on the future of codes and how they differ from the past.  We will also be hearing from Nestor Sanchez who will be discussing testing for fire resistant systems.  The chapter has really had some outstanding meetings this year and this is no exception. 

February will bring another set of excellent presentations and speakers.  We are excited to have Dennis Shelden of Gehry Technologies speak on the very hot topic: “BIM”.  It is such a hot topic it made the cover of December’s Construction Specifier.  The article, written by Alberto Cavallero, AIA, was very informative.  Collaboration is key for a successful BIM project; a theme which is also a major part of LEED.  Collaboration starts in the early design phase and continues through the entire project; which seems to be a change from the past.  Cavallero cites the following as the “significant paradigm shift from traditional thinking:”

• Designers need to open their processes during pre-construction to be inclusive of contractors and sub-contractors;
• Builders need to provide interoperable 3D information;
• The entire team must devote time and energy to careful scrutiny of the model; and
• A spirit of collegiality and trust must be fostered within the team to ensure collaboration and ingenuity always take precedence over blame.”