Mapping Our Journey

Date: 7/7/2021

Author: Nancy Greenwald

A vision for the future of the AEC industry and the role of the Construction Institute. I want to share with you a vision for the future of the industry and the role of the Construction Institute. Our industry was poised for change before the pandemic. Then the pandemic changed everything. Jobs stopped. Supply chains were interrupted. The price of critical materials soared. Work protocols changed dramatically, in both the field and the office. Circumstances forced us to change the way we work. Even people who were averse to technology began to use it in ways they never imagined they would.

What the pandemic created was a sense of urgency for change. And the industry stepped up. You all stepped up. The Institute HAS EXPERIENCED a year of re-creation, adaptation, and expansion. We recreated ourselves as an independent 501(c)(3). We moved our offices to East Hartford. Our certificate programs, already fully online before the pandemic, attracted students from across the US - from Arizona to Wisconsin, to Hawaii. We taught leadership classes to 60 employees at a large infrastructure construction company in Texas.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we created a series of free online webinars as a service to our members. We created our own online platform to deliver the AEC Leadership Conference and redesigned the Women Who Build Summit to a series, creating our virtual Pathway to the next Summit. The virtual world enabled us to get a glimpse into Intel's successful construction management systems and learn about building on Mars by including Visionaries from Seattle and California.

We've covered topics from economic development in Fairfield County to managing teams in tough time to blockchain. And we've had fun. We held a safe in-person golf event last October and a virtual wine-tasting in January. The virtual networking platform for May’s Women Who Build session allowed participants to relax and talk on a virtual beach.

Our programs and webinars have engaged attendees from across the country and around the world - the UK, Australia, Sweden, and Turkey to name a few. We have gained members across the country. We have Board members from other regions. We have continued to publish 2 educational articles each month, written by our member companies and our editorial team and published by our media sponsors.

When I use the word "we", I include all of us - our strong Board and Executive Committee, our advisors, our members who volunteer as organizers, as instructors, as program designers, as writers. We could not have achieved this success without our collaborators - fellow organizations in the industry, like the AIA, ABC, the Connecticut Concrete Promotion Council, The Connecticut Green Building Council and the Construction Users Round Table, to name a few.

If I acknowledged those in this room who contributed, I would likely call on everyone. Every activity we engage in promotes our members and their expertise while working to educate and to move the industry forward. You are leaders in your organizations and leaders in the industry and you represent every aspect of the industry.

I know what draws you to the Institute is its mission - to promote cross-industry collaboration. The Construction Institute is 45 years old. We all know that improved collaboration translates not only into projects that improve cost-effectiveness and timeliness but also produce better buildings - better schools and hospitals, better bridges.

So, we have to ask ourselves - why aren't we there yet? I think the best way to characterize the issues the plague the industry is bad habits. ​What the pandemic showed us is how quickly the industry can adapt. What we need to do is to capture that sense of urgency, that need for change, and that eliminating waste and disputes, will allow us to build more, to build better, build sustainably and to have a richer experience.

This is the year to move the needle forward, while companies are still in the "change" mindset, while they need to improve processes to survive, and before increased workflows allow them to fall back into familiar bad habits. I invite you to take the time to get involved with our projects and help us map the path forward!

Excerpts from CI's Executive Director's speech at the Back Together Again Social in June.