President’s Message – April 2022

By Michael Pearsall, P.Eng., CVS, FEC – President, SAVE International

Restarting Activities

Recently I was excited when asked to prepare a short video for a SAVE International Asia event.  I am very happy to see more events happening again.  More importantly, it in nice to see more SAVE activities that have a global outreach, while still staying relevant to an area of our membership.

SAVE has 22 chapters, plus globally we have recently appointed regional managers to help us with the needs of local members in their areas of the world.  This is an important network to reach our membership and I want to make sure all of the chapter volunteers feel supported by the SAVE Board.

Local chapter or regional events are very important.  For many members, this may be the primary contact they have with SAVE throughout a given year.  These are also great opportunities to network and learn from practitioners in your local area. Lots of people have great stories of their first chapter event and for many this was their introduction to the Value Methodology (VM).

Some people are fortunate to have active chapter close by, and some have to travel a bit further.  If you are committed to the VM and learning, the travel is worth it.  In my early years as a member, I drove over four hours each way to participate in the closest chapter events.  Luckily, I would often find a way to combine this with other business travel to help make it worthwhile.  However, I quickly realized the value of attending these events as I always walked away with a new idea or skill to try.

Globally, we are coming out of a period of two years where many events and activities have been cancelled. Fortunately SAVE was able to pivot and hold our major events virtually and we have learned a lot from that.  This has opened the door for more virtual chapter and regional events or maybe there is a local desire to get back to some of the old personal contact we enjoyed.

Do you have an idea for a local event? Let us know what SAVE can do to support your local chapter activities.

Now that we are into April, our 2022 Value Summit is only two months away. This is the time to book your registration and start thinking about flights. I am getting more excited to see everyone who I have not seen in almost three years now.  I urge you to check out John Corcoran’s Value Summit column this month for more details on the 2022 Value Summit to be held live, in-person in Arizona this June 4-8.

On a less cheerful note, I would like to continue to acknowledge the events going on in Ukraine.  My heart goes out to all of the SAVE members who are affected, and I continue to hope the current situation in that area resolves soon.