ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

MEETING SUMMARY

Friday, February 29, 2008

KCI Airport Holiday Inn Express, Kansas City, MO

PRESENT:Larry Woodlan, ChairPatty Hilderbrand, At Large Director

Gordon DaringGary Stockhoff

Dean LehmanNeil Grigg

Laura CabinessPatricia Kutt, Director of Education

Connie Hartline, Publications Manager

President Larry FrevertAnn Daniels, Staff Liaison

ABSENT:Carol Estes, Staff Liaison

1.Larry Woodlan, Chair, convened the meeting at 8:05 a.m. Introductions were

made. Ann Daniels reported that Carol Estes hopes to return to work on March 6

following successful knee replacement surgery.

2.The meeting summary from the January 14, 2008 conference call was reviewed and approved with the addition of Gary Stockhoff being listed as present for the call.

3.Patty Hilderbrand, At Large Director, gave an extensive report of the actions taken at the February meeting of the Board of Directors. She shared information about the six subcommittees formed at the Board level to review various issues of the Board; the First Time Member Campaign, upcoming workshops, and several other items of interest. She also shared information from the AGC meeting she attended as the Board liaison to that group and asked the members to send her any ideas for “think tank” issues that might be presented to the House of Delegates.

4.Patricia Kutt, Director of Education, joined the meeting and reviewed the three topics for Click, Listen & Learn sessions that had been selected for further discussion from the list submitted by the committee, staff liaisons, members of the Education committee and Education department staff. They included:

1.New uses of cell phones, PDA, GPS, Virginia Pilot

2.Sustainability practices

3.Alternate project delivery systems

The discussion of the first topic indicated several points which might be discussed:

Cell phones have often been found to be the only technology available for use in emergencies since radio frequencies are assigned to specific departments Blackberries frequently lose signals There are political and liability issues Database organization could be helpful


Items discussed on topic 2 included:

Sustainability is probably too broad a topic for a 2 hour format There are so many practical things happening in the field that change how you approach a design aspect or operations The session should be designed to talk to the practical changes needed to deal with the actual changes to the environment Sustainability should be implemented at the technical level. A suggestion was made that Sustainability could be the overall topic with each Technical Committee providing an example of the impact in their specific area


Committee members agreed that the first topic would be acceptable to them as the E&T priority topic for the upcoming fiscal calendar.


As an FYI, Larry Woodlan provided details of the HAWK program that the committee has suggested, indicating it focuses on a variety of ways to move people through traffic. Tucson, AZ has an outstanding system that could be the basis for the content.


Patricia provided information about the Web training series that might be offered on Green Retrofitting. She also distributed the draft guidelines for determining the need and value of a Certificate program. Committee members shared information that some of the terminology of the Construction Inspector certification has legal implications, such as “inspector” should be replaced with “monitor, observer, or

representative”; “As-built drawings” should be “record drawings”. She included updates on other upcoming education programs.



5.Larry Woodlan led the members through a review of the 2007-08 Business plan. Clarification was provided by Patty and Ann on the role of the committee as reviewer of the EJCDC report and the role of APWA as an observer only for the EJCDC document preparation. The members discussed the possibility of developing model language for “indemnification which would keep from negating professional insurance”. By general consent, after the clarifications, the committee will continue to monitor the reports from John Nowak, APWA representative to EJCDC. Carol Estes will be asked to re-send the latest report from John’s meeting attendance.


6.A discussion ensued about ways to get information from the national committee to the chapters. The current methods of communication were reviewed and it was agreed there needs to be more effort on the part of the chapters and the delegates to utilize the information provided to them. Patty Hilderbrand will discuss the possibility of pulling a list of chapter officers or committee chairs with the responsibility of monitoring Engineering and Technology issues from the chapter websites with the IT Department so that information could be forwarded to them directly. Gordon Daring reminded the committee members that information can be pulled directly from the E&T web pages for use as their meetings. The members will also begin a monthly posting to the infoNOW community to offer updates to the members for use in their chapter meetings, as well.