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OPINION
Be your own best advocate
AEC firms and the industry as a whole should be communicating the value we provide at every level of interaction and throughout the design process.
L icensed professional engineers tend to be humble by nature. Now more than ever, it is important to promote the engineering industry’s essential value to society. The value that AEC professionals bring to the marketplace and society has been underappreciated for far too long. The AEC industry’s services are needed to maintain the health, safety, and welfare of our communities in addition to being at the foundation of all infrastructure, transportation, and economic development projects.
Derek Clyburn, P.E.
Our work isn’t always about tackling the largest or most impressive projects, such as the amazing SoFi Stadium and Entertainment Complex in Inglewood, California, or the innovative Mark Basnight Bridge in North Carolina. The AEC industry also responds in times of community crisis and by providing practical economic solutions for clients during emergency situations, even when the work goes unnoticed. The expertise required to respond in these situations should not be thought of by the marketplace as a commodity! The battle against the commoditization of engineering services and the idea that public sector,
and even sometimes private sector clients, think of the services our firms provide as a product is not a new fight. However, as an industry, we have not made progress in this battle, because a lot of it comes down to how we talk about our own value, how we see our value, and how that translates into the way we structure contracts or organize how we’re going to go after business. The delivery of professional engineering services requires lots of thought, collaboration, creativity, and imagination underpinned by specialized training coming up against sometimes very complex
See DEREK CLYBURN, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 13, 2022, ISSUE 1444
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