Item NAI-36 Attachment

Report to the National Society of Professional Engineers Board of Directors, January 5, 2008, San Juan, PR From the NSPE president-elect

On September 5, 2007 I had the personal privilege of meeting with the new president of the Florida Engineering Society for dinner, wherein we discussed our many mutual interests.

I enjoyed the opportunity to meet with the Steering Committee of the National Engineers Week Coalition on October 18 in Washington with past president Gray, and agreed to serve on the selection committee for E-Week’s Faces of Engineering, for which I voted my selections, subsequently. In addition, I had the privilege of visiting then with NSPE staff in Alexandria informally during this visit.

On November 1 – 3, I had the privilege of representing NSPE at the Montana Joint Engineering Conference in Helena, where I had the opportunity to meet with and visit with the leadership of the Mt SPE, and the state licensing board of Montana, the leadership of the Montana Council of Engineering Companies, the Montana Society of Professional Engineers keynoting their awards banquet. I was given more access and opportunity for comment than likely has been granted to any previous member of the NSPE leadership team, for which I am grateful.

In addition, I had the privilege of meeting with the leadership of ASEE, TMS, NCEES, ABET, ASCE, ASME along with the leadership of NSPE in Baltimore to discuss various matters of importance to the entire engineering profession.

In December I had the privilege of attending a meeting of the NSPE leadership to discuss, face- to-face the several matters of interest and concern to our society. In addition, I also had the privilege of sitting in on the debates of the NSPE Board of Ethical Review. I was very impressed by the professionalism and the dedication by the members of the NSPE BER when reviewing legitimate cases regarding the ethical practice of engineering. I highly encourage our membership to consciously review the outcomes reported by the BER, because heretofore, I really didn’t realize the professional attention granted by the Board to these matters.

As your president-elect I am very pleased with what I consider at least modest but positive and progressive progress that we (and that’s all of us) have made in putting out the proverbial self- inflicted brush fires that we have all dealt with. I am pleased to observe that, pretty much, we have nearly solved all of the immediate problems we were faced with, earlier.

I cannot help but be grateful for the commitment and efforts of past president Miller, president Berson, executive director Jacobson and vice president Aldrich, for what I consider to be the successful accomplishment and completion of many of the challenges I saw when I became a member of the leadership team. From where we started, we’ve managed with your help and assistance to rebuild our Society back to the position we should have been in a few years ago – and I’m proud of that.

NSPE President-elect’s Report to the BoD-1/05/08 pg. 1 of 2 I’m facing the major opportunity of wrestling with the challenge of involving a significant number of members of NSPE from the “hinterlands” with matters and interests of the national society, and such occurs in the assignments to the various committees and task forces for our society. At the same time, I am wrestling with my desire to keep these functions to a relative small number of practitioners in each case who can collectively develop and generate a positive outcome for NSPE without inordinate expenditure of time and effort. I plan during the next 30 days to communicate with each current committee or task force chair to honestly ask, “are we making progress?”, and/or “is your assignment or your assigned staff adequate to address the charge given you”? As most of you know, I grew up in Corporate America. The standard there, for better or worse, was that if you can’t find 5 individuals to address and resolve an issue, then fire all and go after it again. I will likely not totally adopt that premise since it is in NSPE’s interest to involve as many as possible in order to encourage wide-spread participation in national affairs by the membership of our society…but, I want you to know my natural tendencies.

I am immensely honored to be in a position to prospectively serve as the leader of our beloved Society. I pledge to do to the best of my ability, what is in the overall best interests of our members and of our Society – with your help.

Respectfully submitted,

H. Ken Rigsbee, PE, F NSPE

NSPE President-elect’s Report to the BoD-1/05/08 pg. 2 of 2