President's Report

By Jack Palmer

Yow, what a great summer we are having. But with all the hot days, most of us are likely looking forward to fall. Seasons change, as do organizations. After 29 years, Judy is retiring as our Executive Director. A Search Committee, Chaired by President-Elect John Nelson along with myself and past presidents Paul Kohler, Tom Harmon and Jeff Andrews, recommended to the ACEC of Maine Board of Directors, which gave its unanimous approval, the firm of Maine Tomorrow. It will provide us with association management support. We investigated the alternatives of hiring an individual to replace Judy or contracting with an association firm. By far the best option was the association management route. This is a fairly common approach with other ACEC Member Organizations in smaller states like Maine. Maine Tomorrow was selected after a thorough QBS search of several management association firms. John Melrose, who many of you will remember as the former Commissioner of Maine DOT during Governor King's administration, is the founder and president of Maine Tomorrow and will provide management oversight. Paul Lariviere will serve as our Executive Director with administrative support from Carmen Robillard. All of these folks have a good understanding of our engineering businesses, and the needs we have. August is transition month with Paul assuming the executive director duties full time on September 1st. We are fortunate to have Judy continuing to provide us legislative affairs support through her leadership role with the Architects/Engineers Legislative Task Force.

Our next Board of Directors meeting is scheduled for September 27, 1:30PM, at the Senator Inn, Augusta. This will be our first meeting with Paul as Executive Director. All members are welcome to attend.

Bruce Weber and Dale Mitchell are busily planning our annual Fall Forum to be held on November 15, 2006, at the Ramada Inn Conference Center in Lewiston. Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) Chair Steve Bradstreet is making the final arrangements for the EEA Luncheon to be held that same day. ACEC of Maine's ACEC/Liaison Orrin MacMurray, who is also ACEC's Chair-Elect, will be joining us for this event. Please mark this date on your calendars and plan to attend. This is our one big event of the year, and I would like to encourage you to make a special effort to participate-submit an EEA project and attend the Forum and Luncheon.