As the Chief Engineer for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Scott Jarvis is responsible for the project delivery functions for the statewide high-speed rail system, including transportation & commercial planning, project management, engineering, environmental planning, right of way, design & construction, and contract compliance.

Jarvis came to the Authority with extensive background and knowledge in multiple areas of major transportation project delivery.   He spent over 26 years at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and worked in several project delivery functions, with an emphasis in construction and project management.

His management experience includes serving as Caltrans’ Assistant Division Chief of Construction. In that role he assisted the Division Chief of Construction in overseeing and executing the statewide construction program, which consisted of approximately 650 projects valued at over $12 billion.  He held several other management positions at Caltrans’ Division of Construction, including Construction Field Coordinator, Chief of Contract Administration and Claims Engineer.  His project delivery experience includes assignments as an Area Construction Manager, Project Manager and Resident Engineer for Caltrans’ North Region.

Jarvis is a Professional Engineer and earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering from California State University, Chico.

Our Fifth Annual Past President’s Dinner and Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship Award was another awesome evening of history and celebration for the Sierra Chapter. On February 17th, your illustrious past presidents were joined by an assortment of members and guests including our Guest Speaker, David Lichtman, publisher of the Sacramento Business Journal.

Dave did an outstanding job of explaining the inner workings of the Business Journal and what drives their paper. Sacramento area readers tend to be highly educated senior managers who need access to local business news that is timely and unbiased. The Business Journal is part of a nationwide network that covers business news in practically every major metropolitan region of the US. Over 95% of their articles are generated by local writers (compared to 30%

Also joining us this evening was the fifth winner of the annual Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship, Jasmeen Chahal.

She is a senior civil engineering student at Sac State focusing on transportation engineering. Jasmeen was joined by her mother, Sal. Jasmeen recently went to work for Dokken and was very excited to win this years scholarship. The scholarship was created in honor of Tim Fleming, who was a Past President of the Sierra Chapter, and a tremendous supporter of our industry.

Finally, Past Presidents joined us from all era’s including ACEC-CA, CELSOC and WAELS.  After dinner, we gathered for the ritual “Past President’s Photo” see below. Thanks again to all the Past Presidents, David Lichtman, and Jasmeen Chahal for making this a very memorable evening.

Our annual Legislative Visit Day is Tuesday, April 5th. This is our annual opportunity to meet with state legislators (Assembly and Senate) and promote our consulting engineer and land surveying agenda. An overview of the day’s activities is below:

7:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Issues Breakfast, The Citizen Hotel

9:15 AM – 11:30 AM: Capitol Appointments

12:00 PM – 1:15 PM: Legislative Luncheon, The Citizen Hotel

Speakers: Assemblymember Jim Frazier and Steve Hall, ACEC National

1:30 PM – 4:30 PM: Capitol Appointments

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM: Legislative Visit Day Reception, Chops Steak Seafood & Bar

If you have not already registered for this important event, please click here to do so.

See you at the Capitol!

Registration is Now Open for Legislative Visit Day!

Legislative Visit Day provides ACEC California members with a great opportunity to talk directly with their state legislators. We will kick-off the activities with an issues breakfast at 7:30 AM, followed by legislative office visits, a policy luncheon and more Capitol visits after lunch. We will end the day with a reception honoring legislators, state officials and staff from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. April 5th is our chance to educate new policy makers on the issues most important to the engineering and land surveying communities, and we need you to help strengthen the relationships important to our future successes. Our principal focus will be Duty to Defend Reform.

ACEC California will also have a Board of Directors meeting the following day, April 6th. To register for the event, click here.

Call to Action – Senate Bill 885

ACEC California’s legislative advocacy team fights hard on your behalf in Sacramento but we need your help. As you know, we are proudly sponsoring Senate Bill 885, a bill that prohibits contracts that require state licensed design professionals, including engineers, land surveyors, architects, and landscape architects, to defend claims made against other persons or entities involved in construction projects. We are now asking that your firm go on record as supporting this effort, thus contributing to a better business environment for engineers and land surveyors. Here is a link to a sample support letter. Please fill in the highlighted area before you put it on your firm’s letterhead and PDF the letter to Kelly Garman, Director of Government Affairs at kgarman@acec-ca.org for delivery.

Please have your letters submitted by April 1st in order for your firm to be listed on the committee analysis.

On Tuesday, March 8th we will have a guest speaker from the Merced County Economic Development. Mark Hendrickson will talk to us about the efforts to develop the Castle Commerce Center in Atwater.

On Tuesday, May 10th our guest speaker will be Denny Jackman from the Salida Municipal Advisory Council. He will be speaking to us about the expansion of Modesto and the recent efforts to limit Modesto’s growth through Measure I.

On Wednesday, July 13th our quest speaker will be Monica Nino from San Joaquin County. She will be talking to us about the joint effort by San Joaquin County and the City of Stockton to develop Airpark 599 right next to the Stockton Municipal Airport.

All of these meetings will be hosted at the Hawkins and Associates Engineering office at 436 Mitchell Road in Modesto from 11AM to 1PM. Lunch will be provided. There is no charge to attend the meetings. If you’d like to attend a meeting listed above, or would like to suggest a speaker or topic for a future meeting, please contact Landon Blake by e-mail at lblake@hawkins-eng.com.

We are also planning a workshop in April entitled “Effective Acquisition of Land Surveying Services for Public Infrastructure Projects”. If you’d like to attend or are interested in helping teach the workshop, please reach out to Landon and let him know.