Region 4 Director Report
Region 4 Report
28 March 2013
David B. Peterson, PE, F.ASCE
The ASCE Board of Direction (BOD) met in
Arlington, VA on March 22 & 23, 2013.
The BOD nominating committee voted to send two official nominees forward as President-Elect candidates to the members this summer. Please review the bios and vision statements of Bob Stevens and Mark Woodson and exercise your right to vote this year. The Task Committee on the Annual Conference and Engineers Without Borders also presented to the BOD. The BOD approved moving forward with a fund raising campaign of $15m for the IMAX movie REAL BIG! Twenty percent has already been raised from two pledges of $1.5m from the Bechtel Foundation and the ASCE Foundation. In addition, the BOD approved moving forward with implementation of five global strategy goals and an expenditure of $100,000 to develop a plan for India as the first country to establish an ASCE presence.
Congratulations to two Virginia Section members who were elected to the 2013 class of ASCE Distinguished Members:
Thomas A. Lenox, Ph.D., Dist.M.ASCE and Vilas S. Mujumdar, D.P.A., PE, Dist.M.ASCE
The ASCE Fly-In to Washington, DC was held on March 19 & 20, 2013. I want to thank many of you for making the effort to attend this year's Fly-In. The 2013 ASCE Infrastructure Report Card was released on March 19, 2013 in an all-electronic format. We will use the 2013 ASCE Report Card to continue to educate the public and policy makers about the critical needs facing our country's infrastructure. Several states in our region will be releasing updates to their state infrastructure report cards this year, too.
I look forward to seeing many of you at our next Region 4 Governor & Assembly meeting in Louisville, KY on April 19 & 20, 2013.
The next multi-region leadership training is February 7 & 8, 2014 in Indianapolis, IN.
I appreciate the opportunity to serve on the ASCE Board of Direction as your Region 4 Director. Please feel free to contact me about any issues concerning ASCE at the local, state, regional or national level. As Director, I am serving as your bridge between the National Board of Direction and the Region 4 Board from October 2012 to October
2015. phone: (919) 878-9560, email: dpeterson@rkk.com.
Region 4 Director
David B. Peterson, PE, F. ASCE
Education
- B.S. Civil Engineering, Virginia Tech - 1982
- B.A. Political Science, Virginia Tech - 1983
- ARTBA Young Executive Development Program - 2001
- Licensed professional engineer in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Maryland
Work Experience
- Rummel, Klepper & Kahl, LLP (RKK) – Raleigh, North Carolina Project Manager
- Over 30 years of experience with bridges and other structures
- Worked on over 500 bridges in 10 states with consulting firms:
HNTB in New York, New York
HSMM (AECOM) in Roanoke, Virginia
Greiner (URS) in Raleigh, North Carolina
DeLeuw Cather (PARSONS) in Raleigh, North Carolina
PBS&J (ATKINS) in Raleigh, North Carolina
- “High Performance Concrete for SC 72 over Broad River” paper presented at Concrete Bridge Conference in Charlotte
ASCE Involvement
- Region 4 Governor (2008-2011)
- Raise the Bar (TCICS-2) Committee
- Transportation Policy Committee
- Judge in Steel Bridge Competition – Carolinas Conference
- Past President, North Carolina Section
- Past-President, Eastern Branch – North Carolina Section
- ASCE’s representative on NC Transportation Leadership Team
- NC Section Infrastructure Report Card Author - Dams & Bridges
- Vice-President NC Section – Program Chair
- 150th Anniversary Champion for Eastern Branch – NC Section
- “Suspension Bridges”, paper award in ASCE’s Millennium Challenge
- Co-Editor “Man-Made Marvels - Civil Engineering in North Carolina”
- Co-Chair “Man-Made Marvels” NC Museum of History exhibit
- Past Chair NC Section History & Heritage Committee
- Past Chair NC Section Structural Technical Group
Other Volunteer Activities
- NC/DOT/CEC Bridge sub-committee Chair
- ACEC/NC Transportation committee member
- ACEC/NC Legislative Committee member
- Sunday School Teacher
- Christian Service Brigade Chairman
- United Way – Loaned Executive, Roanoke Valley, VA
David B. Peterson, P.E., F. ASCE
Region 4 Director
Vision Statement
Where will you be in 2025? By 2025 I hope we can look back over the first quarter of the 21st century with pride at all we accomplished as Civil Engineers. For the past thirty years, it has been my privilege to serve and protect the public as a Civil Engineer. My career has been significantly and positively enhanced by my membership in ASCE, from my student days until today. Our society’s Vision 2025 states, “Civil engineers will be entrusted by society to create a sustainable world and raise the global quality of life.” I wholeheartedly endorse this vision and have begun to work on its implementation. I would appreciate the honor of serving all the members in Region 4 over the next three years as your Region 4 Director.
I will focus my efforts to achieve Vision 2025 in three main areas: Raise the Bar, Infrastructure Investment and Para-Professional roles in the engineering office. For the past couple of years, as a member of the TCICS-2 (renamed the Raise the Bar committee) we have worked diligently at developing and implementing a detailed plan to pass legislation in a couple of states that would raise the bar for entry into the engineering profession. In order to realize the vision, the engineer of the future must be better prepared than engineers in the past. This initiative will really just maintain the bar for academic training; since the number of hours required to graduate with a bachelor’s degree has fallen from 150 to 120 hours at many universities over the past half a century. The model law will require a bachelor’s degree plus a master’s degree or 30 hours additional academic training prior to sitting for the PE exam. For our future as Master Builders, I pledge all of my energy to assist the Raise the Bar initiative across Region 4, the country and in my home state of North Carolina.
Infrastructure investment is a second key area of focus. Working in the transportation field designing bridges, I realize the need for investment in our nation’s infrastructure. That’s why I have participated in the ASCE Fly-In for many years, visited my congressman back home and serve as a key contact when important legislation comes up before Congress. Also, in North Carolina we have now published two North Carolina Infrastructure Report Cards and used them at our state’s Legislative Reception each year to lobby our state senators and representatives on the importance of infrastructure investment in North Carolina. Infrastructure investment creates jobs, improves our quality of life and maintains America’s edge in the global economy.
he role of the para-professional in the engineering office will need to be clearly defined in order to achieve the vision. We need to answer this important question: What responsibilities really require a professional engineer’s seal and what tasks could be performed without a PE in responsible charge? In the past fifty years many roles and responsibilities have changed within our profession. In addition, technological advances have brought more efficiency and challenges to our offices. We need the whole engineering team to be able to work effectively and efficiently together to protect the health, welfare and safety of the public on each and every project.
I look forward to achieving the 2025 Vision, by working diligently over the next three years on the tactics outlined in the Roadmap to achieve that vision. By working together Civil Engineers will be “entrusted by society to create a sustainable world and enhance the global quality of life.”