President's Memo
September 2005
Get Involved-We Need You!
by James R. Cagley
I recently spent several days with the Technical Activities Committee (TAC) at its summer meeting. This dedicated group of 12 professionals led by Sharon Wood is the body that oversees ACI's technical committee activity. TAC arrives early (the Friday before) to every convention and meets Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They also meet for 3 days each summer. TAC members divide the responsibility for over 120 committees among themselves, which means that each member is the TAC contact for about 10 committees.
Why is all of this important to you as a technical committee member? If you are going to spend your time and money to participate on a technical committee, you should have the assurance that your time and money will be well spent.
Most technical committees produce reports and/or standards. The essential difference between the two is that a standard follows a slightly more rigorous process and is written in mandatory language. All technical committee meetings are open. This means that you can attend any that cover a subject of interest to you.
It is relatively easy to become involved with a technical committee. You are always welcome to attend a meeting. Committee missions, meeting times, and locations are listed on the ACI website. If you let the Chair know that you would like to become a member of the committee, he or she will generally try to accommodate you in some way. Typically, most technical committees have nonvoting categories of membership. These include associate members, who attend when they can and receive the committee correspondence, and consulting members, who perhaps can't attend meetings but receive the correspondence.
It is very satisfying as a professional and as an ACI member to participate in the preparation of a report or standard. ACI is the standard of the industry. An ACI document is accepted because the design and construction industry knows that the ACI process means that the document has an excellent level of quality.
Technical committee members come from all areas of ACI membership. We have contractors, professional engineers, students, government employees such as building officials and representatives of different branches of all levels of government, materials suppliers, and others who have an interest in a specific subject.
Probably the most prestigious and best known of the ACI technical committees is ACI Committee 318, Structural Concrete Building Code. Again, these meetings are open and anyone can submit a possible change to the code. Every submitted change will be considered. I was very fortunate to have chaired the committee for the 1999 and 2002 code cycles. I have been asked how to become a member of ACI Committee 318. My recommendation is to become involved with other committees so that your "ACI resume" becomes more developed. It is possible to start out on 318 as your first ACI committee assignment, but it is not likely.
If technical committee work is not your forte, we have an excellent group of educational committees, directed by the 12 members of the Educational Activities Committee (EAC). This committee's mission is to be responsible for the academic and practical educational programs of ACI, to supervise the activities of the 11 education committees, and to increase ACI's effectiveness in the field of education. Paul Tikalsky, a professor, chairs EAC at this time, but by no means are all of the members of EAC, or the education committees, professors. We need input from all areas of ACI membership regarding education.
Education committee meetings are also open and meeting times and locations are posted on the ACI website. Member-ship categories for the education committees are similar to those for the technical committees. If you show some interest and have reasonable qualifications, you can participate.
Another area that holds a possibility for participation is Certification. This activity, while one of our newer programs, has become extremely successful. I will discuss Certification in next month's President's Memo.
I hope I have stirred your interest in becoming more interested in ACI activities. It occurred to me that although we have a substantial group of participants on our committees, we should have more folks and perhaps a better cross section of the membership. We need you! Wouldn't it be nice to see an ACI report with your name on it as a member of the committee that prepared the document? If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at jim@cagley.com. I may not know the answer, but I will have the right person contact you.
James R. Cagley, President
American Concrete Institute
jim@cagley.com
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