President Message January 2009

Fellow CSI Members, Happy Holiday’s and the best wishes for the New Year. Our Holiday Party was well attended with about 45 people coming to enjoy the friendship, food and general high spirit of our chapter.

Once again our monthly dinner meeting (Holiday Party) provided a great opportunity to network with a diverse group of construction professionals from around the North Bay, and in this case, the greater Bay Area and Central Valley. Once again Steve Clark (Vice President and special advisor to the President on parenting a girl) is right again about the value that a $36.00 dinner can bring with such a diverse group of people. We had Chuck Young from Standard Structures, Rob Cox from Tangrine Landscape Architecture (Rob actually brought a Tangrine with him, sorry you missed it). We had Carl Portscheller and his colleagues from Comet Construction, our faithful editorial staff of the BARK, Cyndi Eberhardt from Granite Construction, and Steve Pestell – Rogina Pestell Structural Engineers and hider of Christmas ornaments. There were many others that made up this diverse and professional group and I thank all of you for coming and making this another great CSI event.

As the New Year unfolds and the waters get a little murky in regard to where the construction industry and the economy in general are headed for the next year I can’t help but think about how a connection with CSI is a benefit at any time. I know that recently I was considering a 3rd party plan check instead of going through the PRMD. One of the factors considered when deciding to go 3rd party was that I noticed that Mark Setterland (Setterland & Associates) was one of the approved 3rd parties that the PRMD worked with. Mark is a long time RECSI member and a real professional. The fact that he had an association with our Chapter was a real factor in deciding to contact him and have him provide the service of 3rd party plan check. I can name many instances in the past year where an association with CSI has been a contributing factor in where I decide to do business. For example, Kelly Moore Paint (think Matt Crawford – great guy and the face of Kelly Moore for me, although Vicky and Mario always get it handled in Santa Rosa), or MKM & Associates, Bud Melmanis is a long time member and although Jeff Kennedy worked on the last three sets of my plans the fact that I knew there was an association with RECSI made a difference. It personalized it for me. The folks mentioned above (as well as many others) represent a group of dedicated professionals that are members of our chapter.

Having a connection with these folks and others in our chapter is well worth me paying my own yearly dues and dinner meeting fees. I have nothing to sell, no service to offer, no snazzy product that I can pitch but I do purchase labor, material and professional services for my projects. None of the people I mention above have ever pitched to me at a meeting but it was the roster (thanks to Amanda Evardson) and their membership that helped me find them.

Many of us have multiple professional associations; CSI, AIA, ULI, RERA, NCBE, AACE, IFMA etc. All of these offer a similar networking possibility to form (and transcend) a lasting business relationship. But few organizations offer the possibility of developing such a diverse array of relationships (Kelly Moore and MKM in the same sentence?), but this is the reality of CSI.

Developing the right relationship is important – especially in the field of construction. Utilizing CSI to help facilitate these relationships is a big part of what our chapter is about. If you are reading this you have probably experienced what I am talking about; forming a professional relationship out of CSI. So, even though I am writing to you, my main goal is to encourage you to bring someone into CSI to discover this same thing that we have, a resource that spreads across the construction industry and could benefit them for years to come.

I do hope that all of you will take the opportunity to come to one of our monthly dinner meetings and discover, or re-discover, the potential that lies within our chapter.

I look forward to seeing you all in the New Year, January 8th, when Walter Moody from Ray Carlson and Associates will present an overview of GIS.

Respectfully,

Jim Daniel