QBS Committee Meeting Minutes

November 7, 20173:30PM

Offices of CHA Consulting

300 S. Meridian Street

Indianapolis, IN 46225

Attendees:

Name / Firm / E-mail / Present / Call-In
Henkel, Dave / CHA Companies / /  /  /
Canfield, Cash / American Structurepoint / /  /  /
Al Abbas, Susan / Lochmueller Group / /  /  /
Brown, Brian / EMH&T / /  /  /
Cochrane, Andrew / Shrewsberry & Associates / /  /  /
Combs, Jesse / Bollinger, Lach & Associates / /  /  /
Hawkins, Bill / Strand Associates / /  /  /
Hinds, Shari / USI Consultants / /  /  /
Kelly, Rodney / the etica group / /  /  /
Maurovich, Mike / American Structurepoint / /  /  /
Sheets, Carly / Butler, Fairman & Seufert / /  /  /
Wilkinson, Scott / Beam, Longest & Neff / /  /  /
Yacullo, Michael / Ciorba / /  /  /
Zhou, D Jenny / Michael Baker International / /  /  /
  1. Dave provided the introduction and asked for comments on August minutes. No comments were provided.
  1. Discussion of Rhode Island ACEC QBS
  • QBS Legislation in Rhode Island only applies to local agencies and overall the legislation did not seem to have much in it.
  • The Governor did not sign it, but he let it come into law. There is not a federal portion of the QBS law yet.
  • Rhode Island currently does not enforce the legislation at the state level.
  • When this was passed, there was not a lot of collaboration with their local agencies.
  1. Discussion of HEA 1002 QBS Language
  • The QBS section of HEA 1002 states that Contracts that are paid with exchange funds utilizing the State Swap must use QBS
  • Attaching QBS stipulations to legislation is a great way to get things passed in lieu of trying to push standalone QBS legislation
  1. Discussion of QBS Blast Statistics
  2. Colleen provided data on e-mail blast views, click-backs and un-subscribes
  3. Blasts are also being shared on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram up to 3 times / week
  4. Everyone should go out and share these posts in order to increase our presence
  5. Request for future e-mail blast and communications ideas was presented:
  6. Send ideas to Colleen for future e-mail blasts
  1. Discussion of Community Presence
  2. ACEC Engineering Leadership Program
  3. Brian Brown and Shari Hinds presenting on QBS on April 19th at Noon
  4. AIM Booth Results
  5. Only received a few visitors however collected a lot of business cards
  6. IACC Booth – Upcoming
  7. Dave Henkel and Susan Al Abbas volunteered for Nov. 28th
  8. Jesse Combs and Scott Wilkinson volunteered for Nov. 29th
  9. Purdue Road School – Upcoming
  10. An abstract has been presented and Mark Sullivan may be the presenter if accepted
  11. CEPDS – Not Attending
  12. ITE – Dave Henkel to reach out about giving a presentation
  13. SNOW – Mike Maurovich to reach out to co-workers about attending and providing either a booth or a presentation
  14. DIRT – Brian Brown to reach out about giving a presentation; Cash Canfield presented here in 2017. Comments sent from Cash: The DIRT Conference primarily has clients for the geotechnical industry. The audience is decent sized. I would recommend doing a presentation every 2 or 3 years and I would recommend that it be led by someone from a geotechnical engineering firm supported by a prime consulting firm. I feel like most clients in the geotechnical field select those services based on price, so I believe the presentation is worthwhile but it needs to be supported with real examples of why those services should be done by QBS vs. price.
  15. INASFM – Brian Brown to reach out about getting a booth set up
  16. IWEA – Brian Brown to look into giving a presentation, but not getting booth space.
  1. Discussion of the Booth Banner and Conference “Swag”
  2. ACEC is not longer providing full directories but will be launching a membership directory app that is slated to launch Jan. 1, 2018
  3. We have a retractable banner for our booth and have been handing out lens cleaners
  4. We verified that the business card drawings are acceptable and not an ethics violation due to the money/ gift cards coming from ACEC
  1. Discussion of QBS Marketing Materials for OH and FL
  2. We discussed what OH and FL send out
  3. Andrew Cochrane volunteered to look at other states to see what marketing materials they are using
  4. We will then decide if we want to develop a specific QBS marketing item.
  1. Discussion of EEA QBS Award Voting
  2. Votes due Nov. 22 to Bill Hawkins
  1. Discussion of New Business
  2. ACEC Members in Ohio protested a client’s procurement process due to the Contract utilizing Federal Funds and were able to get the RFP withdrawn and re-issued in compliance with state statutes

Action Items:

  1. Look for new funding streams or legislation to attach QBS to
  2. Share social media posts within our own networks lengthen our reach
  3. Provide Colleen E-mail Blast Ideas
  4. Increase/Develop Social Media presence
  5. Look into Conferences not currently being attended
  6. Review / revise / update presentation material
  7. Reach out to clients who may not be utilizing QBS

Upcoming ACEC Events

12/12/17IT Forum Luncheon

12/13/17Emerging Engineers (Ages 25-35) Networking 101 Event 2-5pm

1/11/18Legislative Luncheon

1/26/18Principals & Owners Summit 2018

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