GBA Outgoing President’s Message

Gordon M. Matheson, Ph.D., P.E., P.G., D.GE

It has been a tremendous honor to have been President of GBA for the past year. I had a very fulfilling experience and have enjoyed working with the Board, Committees and staff. This past year has been a time of major change for GBA. The transition from an externally-managed organization to an internally-managed organization has been a monumental effort that has taken the time efforts of many individuals.

I want to again express GBA’s appreciation for the years of service that Bachner Communications provided to ASFE/GBA and in particular John Bachner, Sarah Lanning, Sara Menase, Phil Pettway, and Barb Nappy.

We are very fortunate to have Sara, Phil, and Barb remaining with GBA and Sarah as a part-time consultant helping us with the new website that is under development. John Bachner is also providing creative services for GBA.

We also need to recognize Joel Carson, our Executive Director, who is celebrating his 6-month anniversary with GBA! Joel has worked tirelessly to get the new organization up and running effectively.

Finally, I want to recognize Schnabel Engineering who supported me in all my years with the Board and provided support to GBA by sharing office space in Rockville, Maryland to help GBA be successful through the transition.

The transition is behind us. It is now time to look forward and continue to enhance the services and products that GBA provides its member firms. To this end, we have been hard at work updating materials that is useful to member firms.

In fact, 18 of the top 25 member-downloads of our materials were produced since 2014. So we have been, and will continue to, actively update our materials so that our members will be able to manage their risk and enhance their firm’s performance.

We have a few other things in the pipeline that will benefit members.

First, we developed a formal relationship with the Geo-Institute where we will collaborate on developing joint programs with the ultimate goal of developing GBA Chapters. This is something we have talked about for many years and we want to thank Kord Wissmann for his hard work to make this possible.

We are also developing an on-line PowerPoint program on the Fundamentals of Effective Project Management. This is being developed by Business Practices and under a sub-group lead by Susan Martin. It is based off an internal program developed by Klohn Crippen and provided by Alex Sy. When complete this year, you will be able to use it for a complete day-long program or break it into a series of “lunch and learns” and customize it for your firm.

A third effort is a new GBA website that is scheduled to debut later this year that will enhance all our experiences with GBA.

Laura Reinbold is taking over for me today. I have known Laura for about 10 years. She is a great leader, very energetic, and a very strategic thinker. She is going to do a great job and really rev things up in the coming year.

In closing, I want to thank the entire Board as well as the committees, who have really made my job easy.

I also cannot conclude without recognition of Steve Thorne and Kurt Fraese, our two past Presidents most involved in the transition to self-management and all the Presidents before them whose time and efforts during their tenure have made GBA the really fine organization it is today!

Thanks everyone for all your hard work and dedication to GBA. The future looks bright for the organization, the industry, and our member firms!

Gordon M. Matheson, Ph.D., P.E., P.G., D.GE