February 27, 2021

Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, ENV SP, LEED AP

President, Chen Moore and Associates

Last week: This past week was the 70th anniversary of National Engineer’s Week. Most readers probably don’t care about that, until you start to realize that everything you do, from your first drink of water until your last alarm setting in the night, wouldn’t have happened without an engineer. In this pandemic, the technology we use has become even more important and we rely even more upon our incredible infrastructure in this country. I’ve been an engineer for more than 20 years, and I know that we work without expectation of appreciation. Just once, though, it would be nice to hear thanks.

Looking ahead: On March 3, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) will release its quadrennial “Report Card on America’s Infrastructure,” giving a comprehensive assessment of our nation’s infrastructure and recommending solutions we need to improve Americans’ quality of life. Broken into 17 categories, ASCE breaks down the country’s most outstanding needs through research and coordination with many governmental agencies. Not to just point out that there is a problem without a solution, though, the “Call to Action” report will quickly follow the release of the report card to give budget-level estimates and policy ideas to legislators.

February 19, 2021

Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, ENV SP, LEED AP

President, Chen Moore and Associates

Last week: If you are like me, you looked at the weather across the country the past week and said, thank goodness I’m in Florida. What you really should have said is thank goodness we have the infrastructure that we do in Florida. With the failure of the unregulated Texan electrical grid, I think more of us should have appreciated the robustness of the Floridian grid and post-storm activities that we’ve had. Even at that, the operators of the nine electric grids saved the day, implementing rolling blackouts that were unpopular but stopped a catastrophic failure.

Looking ahead: Mars rover Perseverance landed last week, but its quest to find life on another planet is one of the greatest things that we can hope to find in the coming weeks. SpaceX, Blue Origin and an assortment of other companies have gotten the credit recently for excellence in space flight, but for the Mars rover, NASA deserves all the credit. We’ve all looked to the sky and thought “what if.” Thank NASA for answering with what is possible. Even Elon Musk owes them that.

February 5, 2021

Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, ENV SP, LEED AP

President, Chen Moore and Associates

Last week: Recently, the American Council of Engineering Companies released the 2020 Engineering Industry Contribution report. This was significant because it finally identified the contribution that architects and engineers have on the economy separately from construction dollars. With an over $600 Billion contribution to the economy and generating $1.55 of GDP for every dollar spent on design, it was found that 1 in 33 Americans owe their jobs to this profession and over $120 Billion in taxes are contributed from these businesses. Enabling $2.2 Trillion in construction activity annually, this accounts for 11% of annual GDP in the US.

Looking ahead: Next week, I’ll be heading to Tallahassee for a series of meetings. While COVID is preventing the typical face to face interactions at the Capitol, it is important that everyone keeps their eyes on the ball with respect to key legislation. As the chair of the “engineers,” an affectionate term given to us when legislators can’t remember our alphabet soup of organizational acronyms, we’re pushing for more resiliency oversight and funding, funding dedicated to water projects like the dedicated transportation funding, smart energy planning, liability relief for engineers that volunteer in disasters and more. Make sure you advocate!

January 22, 2021

Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, ENV SP, LEED AP

President, Chen Moore and Associates

Last week: With all eyes turned to President Joe Biden‘s inauguration, Gov. DeSantis made a number of overdue appointments to a variety of boards. DeSantis’ appointments include posts to the University of Central Florida and Florida Atlantic University boards of trustees, the Florida Housing Finance Corporation Board of Directors, the Real Estate Appraisal Board, and the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority Governing Board. It is well documented that there are hundreds of empty posts in local and statewide boards that are getting close to not being able to make quorum, so I hope this is a good first start!

Looking ahead: I won’t know if what I’m doing next week will be newsworthy for some time. I’m participating in a virtual CEO Forum. That unto itself isn’t very interesting, but the format of the meeting is. The entire meeting will be held in virtual reality. What I find most amazing is that something I previously thought of as only applicable to games with some application to visualizing abstract things – like looking at building systems which previously were only on blueprints – is being applied to a meeting among CEOs. It will be educational at least, hopefully transformational.