News Detail

A Farwell To Arms

3/1/2004

Twelve months ago, the ACI Puerto Rico Chapter threw a party in Vancouver, BC, to celebrate that I was going to become President of ACI. It was a very memorable night. Over the past two decades, I have been involved in many aspects of professional and civil life in Puerto Rico that I thought would make me very well prepared to be ACI's President. Although it was good training, being able to serve the concrete industry by leading ACI requires quite another dimension altogether.

ACI is so well known around the world, not because it has been around for 100 years now, but because for that time, ACI has provided extraordinary technical publications and codes that have served the use and development of concrete as the premier construction material in the world. I visited seven countries during this past year, and we were constantly treated royally everywhere we went, but more impressive than the hospitality and friendship everyone shared was the sense of profound respect and admiration toward ACI.

I will never forget staying up to 1 a.m. with students in Colombia, with them asking questions, sharing their views with us, and being really enthusiastic about concrete. I will never forget prominent engineers in Chile asking me to autograph their newly released copies of the ACI 318-based Chilean Code. I will never forget having my picture taken with dozens of students in Perú, and I will never forget that all the fuss of these events was not because Pepe was there-it was because the ACI President was there.

Some of the membership reading this will become ACI Presidents in the future. To them, I say: honor the moment, enjoy with pride the responsibilities and duties of the task, but never forget you are representing a great technical society that leads the concrete industry.

That is the main reason for protecting and supporting our technical committee work. ACI does not actually produce, place, fabricate, or specify concrete. We develop the standards and codes that work as the backbone of the industry. In other words, the Institute provides the progress through knowledge.

To finish my last President's Memo, I must give my warmest thanks to the ACI committees, to the chapters, to our international partners, to the Board of Direction and Executive Committee, and to our staff for helping the Institute move forward with so many accomplishments and for helping to fulfill the dreams and goals of 100 years of knowledge!

José M. Izquierdo-Encarnación, President
American Concrete Institute
pepe@porticus-ingenieria.com

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