On November 15, the Sierra Chapter was pleased to welcome Maria Lehman as our guest speaker at our membership dinner. Maria is the ASCE national past-president and currently serves as Infrastructure Market Leader for GHD. Maria has held leadership roles in both the private sector and government including Commissioner of Public Works for Erie County (NY) and Acting Executive Director of the New York State Thruway Authority. Maria gave us an exciting presentation of the civil engineering market today and glimpses of where our industry is headed. ASCE’s 2024 priorities include Climate/Hazard Mitigation, Cybersecurity, Energy grid, Transportation, Water Infrastructure, Water Resources, and Workforce and education. Current federal legislation of interest to our members include the National Dam Safety Program Reauthorization Act, Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, and the fiscal year 2024 appropriations. ASCE and ACEC have also been collaborating at the national level to raise awareness for infrastructure needs. This includes participating in programs such as the Engineering and Public Works Roadshow that has been held in multiple locations nationwide to highlight successful public infrastructure projects. Of special concern from Maria’s talk was the projected deficit for civil engineers in the next generation.
ASCE has a new initiative called Future World Vision that includes reimagining Cities of the Future by taking a non-traditional approach to development in order to take a more sustainable path. It was fascinating to hear from someone that has a more national look of our industry.
Another highlight from our meeting was the robotics demonstration provided by Citrus Circuits from Davis. Citrus Circuits is also a group that your Chapter annually supports. This is group of high school students that design, build, and compete each year with a different robot. This year’s challenge was to design a robot that could pick up objects such as a traffic cone. It was amazing to the robot in action. We were all impressed by the demonstration which was followed by a slide presentation from the group. I am sure I speak for many of those in attendance when I say that seeing such passion in young people with engineering focused projects gives me even more hope for our future professionals.
