Back from Region Conference

This fical year's Middle Atlantic Region Conference was a bi-region conference with South East Region & was Building Diplomacy 2006 in Washington DC. Arlington, VA actually, but who's counting. Had a great time & brought back much for the chapter & our Board.

1. Institute has commissioned a study to look at the hiring of the new executive director, branding & governance. The Institute Board is looking at how to make governance more efficient. According to our esteemed junior Region Director, our Institute Board is 20 with an ex-comm of 9. Most similar organizations govern with a 6-8 member board.

2. There is a search firm & nominations committee attempting to bring 2 candidates for executive director to the November Institute Board Meeting.

3. The Board signed an agreement with Arcom over royalties on Masterspec. For new licensees, mention you are a member & the Institute will get the royalties.

4. The Chapter Leaders form is due to the Institute on 4/30/2007. This means we need to do nominations in February & hold elections in March so that we can announce the new Board & officers at the April meeting.

5. The Insitute is starting a database of architecture, engineering & construction management programs around the country to assist in Chapters in contacting schools for possible student chapters.

6. The student events at the National Convention need sponsors, mentors & other help.

7. Apparently, there is new "technical stuff" coming down the pike & the Region is without Technical Chair or committee. We're without committee as well.

a. www.masterformat.com is up & running.
b. Omniclass v1.0 is about to be released.
c. National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS)
d. Section & Page Formats are being updated
e. National CAD Standard v4 is in the works.
f. We have a grant from NCEMBT to write standard terminology for Construction Documents.
g. There is a Sustainable Facilities Task Team developing GreenFormat.
h. A former Institute President & member of our chapter is heading the Uniformat Update Task Team.

8. LOS will be 4/20 & 4/21/2007 at the brand new hotel in Gettysburg. Its only about 20 miles further north from Frederick & apparently a MUCH nicer venue. Hopefully, we can increase our attendance. I hope some folks like SC, TC & JH had fun this weekend & will go to LOS & get some others to go as well.

9. Our junior Institute Director made a big deal about the Institute's Education Foundation. The Institute is hoping to hire a grant writer, but the first thing potential grant funding organizations ask is the level of support this foundation gets from membership. Its low right now. Our chapter should probably step up & give some money to it.

10. Our convention seems to be titled Engineering the Future of Design & Construction. The dates are 6/20 thru 6/22/2007. Currently, the show is 85% sold. They'll be including a leadership track in the education programs as a way to fold CSIUniversity into the convention.

11. Webinars are being held every Tuesday from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM. Our chapter should probably look at hosting a couple of them.

12. Membership campaign has some cool prizes.

13. Pittsburgh budgets a pot of money for travel events & then divides the pot evenly amongst all the members who attend & ARE NOT reimbursed by their companies. However, they take roll at the Region Business Meeting to ensure that only those who attend that meeting get the money.

14. Our Institute Directors may be calling for help with inactive chapters. I saw our Region President after the banquet & offered some assistance with Delaware.

15. I offered manpower to the Chair of the FY2008 Bi-Region Conference.

That's pretty much it. I'll need to type something up for SS to put in our newsletter.