Kansas Professional Engineer eNews

Greetings, I hope this busy time prior to the holiday season is productive for all. Your KSPE leadership has been busy planning the year and digging into activities, including the PE Exam Lunch, Chapter Visits and Chapter Legislative Events.

One on-going planning activity of your State Leadership is finalizing next year’s KSPE budget. While preparing the budget and reviewing actual financials from past years, one thing has become very clear: KSPE IS CURRENTLY AT A CROSSROADS, STATUS QUO IS NOT AN OPTION!

I will attempt to clearly state what KSPE leadership has determined with confidence, after establishing a budget and “rolling around” in past KSPE financial trends.

KSPE has been operating in the RED for the last two years (approximately -$20k per year). KSPE reserves are down to approximately $30k. This has been caused by a continual dues income decline over the past 20 years. For several years, the growth of our Annual Conference offset the lost dues income, but now, the lost dues income is more than the Annual Conference can cover. Our dues income has gone from $90k in 2000 to $60k last year. This has been caused by a reduction in total members and a large number of members who have retired or rolled into the Life Member (non-dues paying) membership category.

Invite New Members to Join and Get Involved. Also, ask former members to re-join. KSPE now has an Associate (State and Local) membership option with a lower dues amount of $180. "Why join" is an easy sell for KSPE: networking with peers locally and across Kansas, voice in Kansas Statehouse and ease of obtaining continuing education. Employers, please support and encourage your employees to join and become active in KSPE. KSPE has been a major player (through its efforts in the Kansas Legislature) in assuring Kansas citizens have sound public infrastructure to support a safe and prosperous environment. We want this to continue for future generations.

KSPE currently has approximately 450 dues paying members (575 total members). For a balanced budget, we need an additional 170 dues paying members (new or re-join). If every current member would sponsor one new member, this issue would go away. There are currently 3,928 PEs residing in Kansas. KSPE and your chapter leadership have a listing of all PEs residing in your chapter, and a list of delinquent and dropped members in each chapter.

Raise KSPE Membership Dues from $150 to $200. This is not an appealing option, however the state dues have not increased for at least 14 years. Compared to Option 3, this option doesn’t sound too bad. Our contract association management fee has not increased in the last 10 years, and the workload has remained generally constant.

Reduce KSPE Services. The only way to reduce sufficient cost to provide a balanced budget is to reduce the services provided by our association management firm. Stated clearly, we likely would lose our legislative voice in the Kansas Legislature.

This is not a good option for multiple reasons. First, it’s a short term (non-sustainable) solution, we would likely have to re-address the problem again in the future.

Secondly, now is definitely not the time to weaken our voice in the Kansas Legislature. With the impending daunting legislative session (in which the Legislature will need to cut the State General Fund from $6B to $5.4B or invent money), there will be no “sacred cows” this year in the State budget process. In the interest of public welfare and safety, KSPE needs to have a presence to help the legislators understand long term impacts of the decisions they will be asked (or strong armed) to make. There are currently no PEs serving in the Kansas Legislature. Issues such as cuts to higher education funding (including our engineering colleges), cuts to infrastructure funding, and taxation on professional services are expected to be debated in the upcoming session. KSPE will be at the table! Let’s make sure we’ll be at the table during future sessions.

KSPE leadership needs to hear from our grassroots members on this issue. Please ask questions and provide thoughts and suggestions to your Chapter Director or any other KSPE Leadership team member. Contact information for these folks is included in the Members Section of the KSPE website (www.kansasengineer.org). If you do not have the username and password to access the member only section of the website, please contact the KSPE office at 785-233-2121.

So far the Eastern, Tri-Valley and Topeka Chapters have hosted or scheduled a legislative event. Local legislators appreciate the opportunity to discuss concerns and issues with their constituents outside of the session, plus they enjoy a free meal. These are an excellent opportunity to get to know our legislators personally prior to the session, when we need our legislators to care about our issues. I encourage all members young and not-as-young to take advantage of these opportunities and get involved. If other chapters are interested in hosting an event, please contact your Chapter Director or KSPE leadership.

Thank you to Tri-Valley, Smoky Valley, Wichita and Southeast Chapters for hosting KSPE Executive Director Ron Gaches and myself for our annual Chapter Visits. We currently have visits scheduled with Hutchinson, Eastern and Topeka. Southwest, Northwest and Golden Belt Chapters. Please let Ron or me know if we may have the opportunity to visit your chapter.

These chapter visits have been the most enjoyable experiences so far this year. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to visit peers throughout Kansas to discuss issues of our great profession. I truly believe we are the greatest profession, as we are all about doing what is right in the interest of public welfare and safety. I’m honored and blessed to be able serve this calling and serve as your President. Thank you.

KSPE Executive Director Ron Gaches addresses the Wichita Chapter during the KSPE chapter visit.

Smoky Valley Chapter Members Elliot Harris, Ron Chandler,
Tim Miles and Wayne Nelson during the KSPE chapter visit.

With the Kansas economy suffering through the same recession as the rest of the nation, state general fund revenues have fallen off dramatically over the past 18 months. During that time the Legislature and Governor have taken action to reduce state spending four times, with another round of reductions imposed by Governor Parkinson through his allotment authority expected before the end of November.

Important programs have been cut – education, social services and corrections – and prospects for funding a new comprehensive transportation plan don’t look favorable. Some would say bleak. Making resolution of our state budget problems more difficult is the unexpected surge in K-12 student enrollment, and increasing numbers of kids qualifying for subsidized lunch and at-risk programs. The public education funding issues are made more difficult by the threat of another school district lawsuit to impose “fair funding” and requirements of the federal stimulus plan that requirement “maintenance of effort” at nothing less than 2006 funding levels for K-12 and Higher Education.

The challenges for the Governor and legislators are immense and no one has a clear roadmap yet for how to work through our current situation. At least three political camps are emerging: 1) many fiscal conservatives see the current revenue shortfalls as an opportunity to eliminate unnecessary and inefficient state programs and right-size state government, 2) education and social service advocates are calling for an increase in taxes to restore the delivery of services, and 3) a middle group that are hoping to trim spending from the least critical state programs, prioritize the rest and hope for a quick economic rebound to restore the flow of state general fund revenues. At this point, none of the three groups represents a working majority in the legislature.

The influence of fiscal conservatives has strengthened considerably by the rise of Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth PAC, Flint Hills Institute and the resurgent Kansas Chamber of Commerce. Advocates for education and social services have been quick to step up their own efforts and are better organized and funded than they have been in recent years. Kansas Action for Children has expanded its reach through effective communications programs and strategic initiatives, and networks of families reliant on social service programs are utilizing modern communications media to improve their own advocacy.

One result is that there is more information available to the average citizen taxpayer than ever before. Modern websites track state spending and legislative voting records more closely than ever before. (See www.kansasopengov.org and www.kslegislature.org) You can expect most advocacy organizations will be spending heavily during the 2010 election cycle to make sure voters understand where the candidates are on critical tax and spend issues.

Looking Past 2010
These short-term issues make for interesting headlines and hard charging politics. There’s no doubt, there are important taxation and spending policies to be discussed and settled in the 2010 session. For the most part, these challenges and their solutions are short term. The United States and Kansas economies and state general fund will rebound, and the mounting political and budget pressures will ease. Looking more long term, there will be winners and losers, not only among industry competitors but among states as well.

Smart and aggressive business competitors are positioning themselves now to capture market share when the economy rebounds (note Goodyear’s $250 million investment in their Topeka plant announced this summer). So, too, states should be positioning themselves for growth when the economy turns. Two critical areas of long-term investment opportunity in Kansas are our public infrastructure and higher education spending.

Virtually everyone agrees that the two ten-year transportation plans have been a great benefit to Kansas; in terms of job creation, improved traffic safety improving the flow of commerce. Continued investment in our public infrastructure is essential to our long-term prosperity. There is the immediate job creation associated with infrastructure investment, which should never be discounted, but more important are the long-term improvements to our economic and cultural qualities of life. For the purpose of the public health, safety and welfare we need modern and efficient utilities, transportation systems and public buildings. There is a very public side to tangible investments that should be made in a state that no amount of private investment can or will replace. It is only smart to protect our current investments and continue to make wise investments for the future. While many legislators are at odds over what level of spending is appropriate for the short-term and where to raise the state funds to meet immediate needs, long-term investments for Kansas infrastructure remain popular among most policy makers.

The more difficult long-term investment opportunity is to reprioritize higher education funding to protect and enhance our university and college programs that contribute to the Kansas economy. The legislature wisely moved to a block grant format for funding higher education nearly 20 years ago, giving our Regents administrators greater autonomy in directing the use of funds on their campuses. Unfortunately, higher education administrators have responded to the current budget problems with too simple of a strategy for handling state revenue reductions. Instead of prioritizing higher education programs to minimize the downstream impact on the Kansas economy, administrators have generally cut all programs the same across the board. While this decision probably makes sense in the context of appeasing the varied political interests on campus, it is a worrisome condition for the future of our State.

Before I proceed I must make a disclaimer. I am the product of a liberal arts education from Kansas State University. My study of political science and economics prepared me pretty well for additional study at Washburn University Law School. I have a great appreciation for the arts and the valuable contributions our Regents communities play in advancing the arts and culture of our great state. I grew up in one college town and now live in another. The fine arts and other cultural offerings of my hometown are an important part of why I live where I do. Still, we have more than enough attorneys in Kansas and the future supply will surely take care of the need.

Invest Wisely in Our Future
What we don’t have enough of are engineers, scientists, and others with technical degrees essential to the future employment engines of the Kansas economy. Just as Goodyear has made a major investment in Topeka to satisfy the future worldwide market for giant truck tires, our Regents institutions should reprioritize their spending to ensure we are generating the graduates need to satisfy our current employers and give birth to the next generation of entrepreneurs so important to our economic future.

It’s not my desire to tell Regents leaders how to reprioritize their spending, but the need to refocus their attention on the most highly valued outputs should be obvious. Everything I read and my conversations with knowledgeable faculty inform me that higher education institutions are more resistant to change than any other American institution. Certainly the exasperated howls of despair from some academia suggest they were not prepared for someone to move their cheese by cutting $100 million from state support and demanding greater accountability to Kansas taxpayers.

Two years ago Senate President Steve Morris launched an initiative to increase the number of engineering graduates from our three ABET accredited Engineering Colleges by 50%. Our Deans prepared a White Paper that described the investments needed to open up the barriers to achieving that goal; primarily the expansion of classroom space and addition of faculty, both expensive investments. Senator Morris was responding to the repeated calls from industry and major consulting firms for Kansas to help with their hiring needs. At the time Black and Veatch had 500 jobs open in the Kansas City area, Garmin was considering locating new jobs out of state, and our aviation industry was projecting a dramatic loss of skilled workforce (including engineers) due to retirements. After the first year of inactivity, the Board of Regents assembled a Task Force to discuss the issue. They met once and never reassembled, and no further plan ever developed.

These are difficult economic times but they provide a moment of relief from some of the pressing needs of our major employers. The number of open jobs are down a bit and retirements at our aviation firms have been replaced with layoffs. But the long-term problem remains. Kansas is not producing enough of the right highly educated engineering, scientific and technical professional workforce to meet the needs of tomorrow.

Smart firms (like Black & Veatch and Garmin) are looking to the future and understand that the gains they make know will be compounded when the economy rebounds. Kansas should adopt a similar, forward-thinking approach to address our state budget problems. Policy makers must be reminded of the importance of our core industries and the high-value professionals they require. We should leverage our strengths, including our strength in engineering.

The Engineers Foundation of Kansas has recently funded a study by Wichita State University to put a solid number on the valuable contribution engineers make to our Kansas economy. We hope to have that analysis in time for the start of the 2010 legislative session and use it to help inform policy makers about the importance of expanding our base of engineers and engineering jobs. You can contribute to that discussion by addressing these concerns with your legislators prior to them leaving for Topeka in early January.

Thank you to all those members who participated in the EFK Fundraiser Golf Tournament on October 2 at Alvamar in Lawrence. The money raised from the tournament goes to a great cause. Revenue from the event is used to support activities of the Engineers' Foundation of Kansas including programs such as MATHCOUNTS. Money raised also provides grants (in the amount of $2500 each) to be used for student and faculty development at the three Kansas engineering colleges. The three colleges include: Kansas State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University.

EFK President Greg Weatherd, P.E. (left) gives grant checks to Dick Hayter, P.E. (center) of KSU,
and KU Dean Stuart Bell, Ph.D., P.E. (right).

		1^st Place, 1^st Flight Tim Miles Khalil Jaber Craig Linda Don Turek	2^nd Place, 1^st Flight Jason Duncan Art Paylor Brady Pryor Ed Sexe
		3^rd Place, 1^st Flight Scott Fillmore Nick Gordon Duane Henderson Ryan Starkovich	1^st Place, 2^nd Flight Brett Letkowski Paul Gunselman Gary Janzen Jeff Lackey
		2^nd Place, 2^nd Flight Kent Dvorak Steve Pretsch Mark Schroeder Erik Troy	3^rd Place, 2^nd Flight Sid Arpin Dan Hardin Shane Krull Michael Yanez
		Closest to the Pin #4 Dan Scherschligt	Closest to the Pin #12 Don Turek
		Longest Drive #9 Steve Pretsch	Longest Putt #18 Ron Gaches

Be sure to mark your calendar for next year's tournament! The 11^th Annual Engineers’ Foundation of Kansas Fundraiser Golf Tournament will be held September 17, 2010 at Alvamar in Lawrence. More information on the tournament will be released at a later date. If you have any questions, please call the KSPE office at 785.233.2121.

On behalf of the Engineers' Foundation of Kansas (EFK) I would like to thank the following for their sponsorship of this year’s EFK Golf Fundraiser. It is during economic times such as these that the commitment to the work of EFK is appreciated even more. Through their partnership with EFK, these sponsors are contributing to ongoing support of the students and faculty in the Colleges of Engineering at KU, KSU and WSU as well as programs such as MATHCOUNTS, Future Cities and Project Lead the Way. Together we are making a positive impact to the engineering profession in the State of Kansas.

$1,000 Hole Sponsor
Aquaterra Environmental Solutions, Inc.
Baughman Company
Cook, Flatt & Strobel Engineers, PA
Cretex Midwest/Ash Grove
GBA
HNTB Corporation
Kansas Gas Service
Lockton Companies
MKEC Engineering Consultants
Terracon Consultants, Inc.
Wichita/McPherson Concrete Products
Wilson & Company, Inc. Engineers &
Architects

KSPE sponsored the PE Exam Luncheon and provided nearly 140 examinees with a free brownbag lunch on October 23, 2009 in Topeka. A big thank you goes out to our KSPE volunteers for helping with the event! Click here for pictures and additional details on the event.

Metropolitan Kansas City Chapter ICC
Educational Seminars
December 7 - 11, 2009

Olathe Fire Department Administration Building
Olathe Room
1225 S Hamilton Circle
Olathe, KS 66061

2006 I-Codes and Green Building (0.6 CEU) - Monday, December 7, 2009, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. This seminar provides an overview of current green building practice and its relationship to construction codes. The goals of green building initiatives, the need for green building, and the six strategic areas of green design – sustainable sites, material resources, water conservation, indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency and innovation are examined. The longstanding role of building codes in sustainable buildings is explained and the specific “green” features of the International Codes is explored in detail.

Upon completion, participants will be able to: Describe the green building; Describe how the green building will affect the role of the building official; Explain the strategic areas of green building design; Describe the various types of green building evaluation systems and standards currently available or in development; Identify how green building techniques relate to the I-Codes; Analyze green features in buildings; and Create an action plan for implementing green at work or in your jurisdiction.

Developing Green Building Ordinances and Programs (0.6 CEU) – Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. Building departments are being tasked with the responsibility for establishing local sustainable building programs. This seminar examines the options available when developing programs, including both voluntary and mandatory approaches. The course includes examples of successful programs currently in place in jurisdictions around the country. Worksheets and checklists are provided to assist in program implementation.

Upon completion, participants will be able to: Discuss the differences between mandatory and voluntary programs/ordinances; Identify guidelines for developing a voluntary green building program; Apply strategies for how the public process and participation works in developing local programs; Identify the key components that are necessary for putting together a green building program/ordinance in local communities; and Apply a process that one community has used to develop a green building ordinance.

2006 IECC Fundamentals (0.6 CEU) – Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. This course examines critical concepts of the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). It also provides a basis for the correct use of the code in the design, plan review, inspection and analysis of projects. It will provide a clear understanding and correct use of the requirements identified by these basic code provisions, tables and categorizations. It will also allow code users to apply the code in clear-cut situations and help to build their understanding of the intent of the code when asked to make code compliance decisions.

Upon completion, participants will be able to: Locate general topics (chapters) in the 2006 IECC; Locate applicable tables in the 2006 IECC for specific situations; Apply code requirements to clear-cut real-world situations; Explain the intent behind a given code requirement; Use judgment to identify borderline scenarios as compliant or noncompliant; and Identify essential code components for designing energy-efficient building thermal envelopes, energy-efficient mechanical design principles, and electrical power and lighting systems.

Building Construction: A Firefighter’s Perspective (6 PDH) - Thursday, December 10, 2009, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. Understanding the differences in building construction can make the difference between a safe, efficient fireground operation and instant tragedy. This course provides you with up to date tools and information to allow you to distinguish between the different construction types and how fire behavior differs with each.

Building and Fire Code: Strategies for Success (6 PDH) - Friday, December 11, 2009, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm. This course addresses five “Core Concepts” from proven fire prevention programs that can easily be adapted to fit any code enforcement mission: cultural change, risk assessment, code enforcement, investigation, and public education.

Ø Continuing Education Credit: Participants will earn continuing education credit for each seminar they attend. 0.1 CEU is equal to 1 Professional Development Hour (PDH), or 1 Learning Unit (LU). The continuing education credit for each seminar can be found in the seminar descriptions directly after the seminar title in brackets. Participants will need to self-report continuing education credit for both the “Building Construction: A Firefighter’s Perspective” and “Building and Fire Codes: Strategies for Success” seminars. Certificates will be presented upon completion of each seminar.

Ø Fees: Include instruction course materials and break refreshments. Lunch is not included. Participants will receive course materials at the seminars.

Ø Refund Policy: Requests for refunds must be received by November 13, 2009, to receive a full refund. Requests for refunds received after November 13, 2009, are limited to 80 percent of the fee. No refund requests will be accepted after December 11, 2009.

Ø Hotel Accommodations: There are numerous hotels in the area: Econo Lodge, Holiday Inn, Microtel Inn, Best Western, La Quinta, and Sleep Inn.

Ø Directions and Sign-in: From Southbound I-35, take exit 217 to Old 56 Hwy. Travel approximately 1 mile to Public Safety, turn left. Turn left on Hamilton Circle to 1225 S Hamilton Circle. From Northbound I-35, take exit 215 to us-169/KS-7. Turn left onto KS-7. Travel approximately one-half mile, turn right onto Hamilton Circle to 1225 S Hamilton Circle. Sign in at the seminars will start 30 minutes before each presentation.

Anyone who has done any maintenance or upkeep of any type, on anything, can & will appreciate these truisms.

KSPE would like to welcome the following new members who have joined since our last issue.