By Renee Hoekstra, CVS – President, SAVE International
As the seasons change, so must SAVE International. The SAVE Board is in the final throes of selecting a firm to help our organization to become a stronger brand, better understood for who and what we are and hopefully to help to continue to build our organization around the world. These are exciting times, but they also may be frustrating for many. Change for some can be very difficult.
As an example, we have struggled with the terms Value Engineering, Value Analysis, Value Management and Value Methodology. I have realized that we all must stand together in our decision to use the term Value Methodology (VM) to reduce one’s misunderstanding and to eliminate the confusion that has been there for many, many years. However, it is tough to do. So many people relate to one of the other terms and there may be a fear that if those terms are not used, it may impact their company’s bottom line.
At RHA, we just had such a conversation as we were trying to update our website. I believe that we must try and stand firm as part of RHA’s overall efforts to help our industry solidify how VM should be expressed. As I said, change can be difficult. I know many of you may also be struggling with this and your help for the sake of consistency in the industry is appreciated.
It’s also that time of year and elections are right around the corner for the Executive Vice President, Secretary-Treasurer and Directors. I am overwhelmed with the responses we received and the interest from our members to serve on the SAVE Board. This is the most we have seen in many years. With that said, for the first time, we realized that there needed to be some changes to our bylaws. In all transparency, I wanted to make sure these are understood, as they will take effect in June 2021, after the election.
Because we have a limited number of overall Board positions and then a very limited number of those members who serve on the Executive Committee, we believe it is important to allow participation from different organizations. The bylaws changes will limit the number of Board positions that any one organization can hold at one time. We believe that this is best for SAVE as it ensures that we get a much broader perspective from our membership when it comes to helping to steer our organization in a direction that is best for all members. We also want to ensure that there is not a perceived conflict of interest. SAVE really wants to engage our membership – diversity is important.
I also want to let those of you know that received notification that you will not be on the slate for the election, that you are appreciated, and you may just need a little more experience. How do you get experience you may ask? Please volunteer for some of our chair positions that become available from the various Directors and, also, get involved with your local chapters, become an officer, take on a special project and when we are looking for volunteers in our Tiger Teams, reach out and join a team. We really do want to help you become qualified to serve on the Board.
Speaking of the Board, we have had some changes. As you may or may not know, Tammy Dow had to resign as our Director of Conferences, and we are excited about having John Corcoran from Jacobs Engineering volunteer to finish out her term. John has been serving on the Value Summit Planning Committee over the last couple of years and was a perfect fit. He will also be running again to be able to serve a full term in the elections in June.
The elections are important for us, so please remember to review the slate carefully and make a decision that you believe will help to continue the successful work and the direction that we have established over the past four years. We are excited about our momentum and we want to continue those successes.
Another exciting thing for me is that I have finally been able to begin to work on one of the goals I have wanted to accomplish during my term as President. With COVID, as you all know, we were forced to “pivot” to accommodate so many new approaches for conferences, workshops, and education, which has taken much of our time. However, as of late, I was able to meet with a new not-for-profit organization, the Society of Product Cost Engineering & Analytics (SPCEA). This group is solely focused on cost engineering for manufacturing. SPCEA and SAVE have, what I believe to be, a perfect alignment. It is amazing to see the manufacturers that are already signing up to join their organization. Their Board has agreed to sign an inter-organizational cooperative agreement with SAVE and we are in the process of presenting this to the SAVE Board for approval. This is a great opportunity to share resources, educational opportunities, marketing opportunities, etc. We think there can be some great synergy for both our organizations.
I have also just presented to the San Francisco Chapter of ASPE, another young organization with a focus on professional estimators, and they are interested in discussing a potential alliance with SAVE and I’m hoping that we can expand this to their national organization. And one other item, I will be presenting at a joint meeting with the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and the ASPE Dallas Fort Worth Chapter. I’m hoping all of this will lead to further Cooperative Agreements whereby we can support one another in all that we do. These are all organizations that are complimentary and can help to Spread the Word about VM as well as our members understanding what they do.
As I mentioned, these are exciting times. I am a little behind in achieving my goals; however, we have accomplished so many other things for our members and our industry. In all honesty, I believe COVID gave SAVE a strong push into delivering our services and training in the virtual world and we have risen to the challenge and you have all been stellar in helping us to grow and continue to support our industry and SAVE. Thank you all for supporting me as well.
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