Winter 2022

NSPE Today: Outlook
Building Synergy for Greater Member Value

BY RICK GUERRA, P.E., F.NSPE, PRESIDENT 2021–22

After joining NSPE, members point to many tangible benefits that help them in their lives as professionals. One intangible that often goes unrecognized, however, is the benefit of a nationwide network of state, local, and national organizations working together for members.

This year, NSPE is placing particular emphasis on building greater synergy within this network, among our state society partners, and across each of our strategic focus areas.

What do members gain from state-local-national cooperation? Here are four benefits of this tripartite teamwork.

1. Influencing Legislation

Legislation related to the practice and licensing of engineering is enacted at the state level. Each of our state society partners, through its own efforts, supports or opposes such legislation to the best of its ability for the betterment of the profession. While some of our state society partners are well staffed and equipped to provide such a service for members in their state, others are not.

From experience as a federation, we know that legislation proposed in one state, often crosses state lines to affect legislation elsewhere around the country. This tendency creates great opportunity to leverage our network of federated state societies to collectively influence and drive legislative outcomes across the country for the benefit of all. No issue has made this clearer than the numerous shortsighted attempts at licensing reform by state legislators, which spurred NSPE to form the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing.

To boost cooperation on the legislative front, the NSPE Committee on Policy and Advocacy is working to develop a national advocacy strategy that will enable our state society partners to jointly monitor and drive legislative outcomes by engaging more of our members in our state and national advocacy efforts.

2. Reimagining Education

The pandemic served to make an already shrinking world market even smaller. It also changed the way we communicate with our members and forced us to find new and creative ways to deliver educational content. In many cases, artificial chapter and state barriers were removed to expand educational opportunities across chapter and state borders, creating value never before contemplated.

As we begin to reimagine our educational content and delivery systems for the future, we are applying the valuable lessons learned from the pandemic to improve our educational processes. By leveraging the collective strengths of our national, state, and chapter organizations, we will build a robust, nationwide education program that meets the needs and expectations of a demanding and evolving licensed engineering community.

3. Building Leaders

In November, leaders from every state and territory of NSPE were asked to collaborate and study our common struggle to develop and maintain pipelines of qualified and willing leaders at the local, state, and national levels. This Leadership Pipeline Initiative will continue throughout the spring and will culminate with an in-person facilitated workshop held in conjunction with NSPE’s Professional Engineers Conference in August. At the workshop, this group of leaders will compile a list of recommendations and best practices that can be used across the country to build and maintain robust leadership pipelines and carry NSPE into the future.

4. Encouraging Diversity

NSPE is committed to improving the profession by advocating for and supporting a climate of diversity and inclusion. We know that for our profession and our organization to grow, we must work to create an environment that is welcoming and supportive for all capable and qualified engineers.

To date, NSPE has led the charge at the national level by creating the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Committee, identifying opportunities to collaborate with other engineering groups to advance diversity and inclusion in our profession, and raising awareness across the county through education programs.

This commitment is also playing out in state organizations like the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers. GSPE has not only formed its own DEI committee, but also featured the topic at the organization’s PDH Day in December.

Moving forward, we will seek out and seize opportunities to work with our state society partners and individual NSPE members to advance this strategic imperative and drive change in our organization and our profession.

Pulling Together

While synergy already exists within our federation, we can build more in the coming years to provide increased value for our members, local chapters, state societies, even for the public we serve. Doing so will require pooling the collective strengths, talents, and best practices of our national, state, and chapter organizations for the benefit of all.

This is an exciting time for NSPE. As we emerge from the grips of the pandemic, we are well positioned to rebound, strengthen our infrastructure, invest in the future, and enhance the programs and services that we provide for our members. Now is the time to align our resources and build the synergy that will propel us to an even better and brighter future for NSPE and our noble profession.