News Detail

Happy Memories—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

3/1/2006

As I complete my term as President of ACI, I want to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to work for you this last year. It has been a great experience for both my wife, Sharon, and me. She has been with me every step of the way and traveled with me on virtually all of my trips. In my initial memo, I outlined my Presidential objectives for you. It seems relevant at this time to review the progress on meeting these objectives.

The ACI leadership staff was generous in that they prepared their objectives for the year to parallel mine. This was a tremendous assistance to me in achieving success in any form. The following is a review of my objectives and my own evaluation of our successes and failures:

• Implement a strategy for improving the involvement of more and younger folks in ACI activities. We have made some strides in this area but have much further to go. Come on younger folks, we need your help if we are to continue to develop. One activity that was featured in my January 2006 memo was the new program to offer members the opportunity to obtain CEUs online for FREE. This is valuable to professionals of any age who hold professional licenses. In the near future, ACI will also be launching a FAQ site for questions related to ACI 318 and ACI 301.
• Continue developing ACI's international role. We had a specific goal under this objective to hold a Third International Workshop on Structural Concrete in the fall of 2005 in conjunction with our fall convention. The Workshop was a tremendous success with the participation of 63 representatives from 16 countries, mostly from Latin America. Other international activities included participation in the High-Performance Concrete Conference in Washington, DC; participation in IBRACON's 47th Conference in Recife, Brazil, which also included an ACI/CANMET conference; participation in the New Zealand Concrete Industry Conference; meetings with the Concrete Institute of Australia and the Cement and Concrete Association of Australia; the ISO TC/71 meeting in Seoul, Korea; the International Chapter Roundtable in Bangkok, Thailand; a presentation in Hong Kong for the ACI China Chapter; and representation of many of our International Partners at our two ACI conventions.
• Continue ACI's Electronic Communications Initiative. The staff has made great progress in this area.
• Reach out to the concrete constructors to improve their participation in ACI. We participated in the American Society of Concrete Contractors CEO Forum, World of Concrete, and certification activities and learned many things about the great programs and the very positive activities directed toward contractors.
• Expand ACI's working relationship with other technical societies. We have continued our task group with ASCE/SEI on joint technical committees, had two more meetings involving the leadership of ASCE(SEI) 7 and ACI 318, and some new activities with the American Institute of Steel Construction and the International Concrete Repair Institute.
• Expand ACI's Fellowship program. I feel that we have had limited success with this objective. We recently established a new task group, which includes the program's founder and some of the major contributors, to review the Fellowship program and hopefully offer some improvements.

Overall, we have done some things to enhance membership in ACI, but there are many more items to take care of. We want to provide all of the members with more "bang for their buck" and an enrichment of their careers by the time spent in ACI. If we want ACI to grow and to continue to be a positive force for the good of construction throughout the world, we must participate rather than assuming that someone else will do it.

In conclusion to my year as President of ACI, I want to again thank you, the members, for allowing me to represent you all over the world. You can be assured that I took the responsibility seriously and tried to spread a positive message at every opportunity. My family, particularly my wife, Sharon, has been very supportive, and the younger partners in my firm have basically done my job for the last several years. All four of my daughters, Debby, Kasey, Shelly, and Kristy, will be in Charlotte for the convention. I am very proud of them and truly appreciate their support and the fact that I think that they are actually proud of their Dad, Grandpa Jim.

James R. Cagley, President
American Concrete Institute
jim@cagley.com

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