Northern Pacific Civil Consortium

Last Thursday, I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting of the Northern Pacific Civil Consortium (NPCC). This is a group of CADD managers for Civil Engineering companies in the Sacramento, California area.

This group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month, to discuss issues, have presentation, and share knowledge about matters that they have in common. NPCC is modeled on the highly successful Civil CADD Consortium (C3) group in Southern California that I have mentioned before.

Subjects of this last meeting were

1. AUGI AU Promo
2. Educational grants of Autodesk software
3. Autodesk software home use policy
4. Sheet Set Manager Demonstation

Although the August meeting is a planning meeting for current members only, potential new attendees may want to place the September meeting on your calendars. It will be on Thursday, September 27th at 5:00 PM. Contact the current President David Zavislan at FirstnameDotLastnameAtNolteDotCom (Please forgive the need for this precaution) for meeting location information.

So, if you are a CADD Manager for a Civil Engineering company in the Sacramento area, and wish to be a part of such a organization, I highly recommend that you attend and/or join this group.

Bad for Most - Good for a Few - Baby Boomers Retirement

A reality for many industries is the impact of the impending retirement of baby boomers. It is said that over 40% (maybe as much as 50%) of the industry will reach retirement age within the next five to 15 years. We all know that there is already a shortage of employees in our industry. With this mass exodus things will get worse. Those who do not have some sort of plan will be in a very difficult situation.

In the document "Offshoring: Implications for the Engineering Workforce and Profession" Ralph W. Wyndrum, Eng.Sc.D, paints some rather unpleasant scenarios. But I found a section of his "Closing Notes" rather poignant. Here is an excerpt...


The professional engineering societies... will quickly lose relevance if we don’t do a good job of enabling our members to thrive in their profession, providing them with better tools and direction to deal with the challenges posed by globalization. We have to be equipped to respond to members effectively when they ask: How can I be more “innovative?” What does it mean to be “entrepreneurial?” What technologies will I need to be versed in to stay competitive in the next five years? We also need to be able to break down our disciplinary smokestacks and move more nimbly to expose our members to the intersections of technology, where innovation increasingly occurs.

For the "glass is half full" crowd... There will be many opportunities for advancement in the coming years and those that are prepared will have lots of options.

New Blogger Interface!

I have been waiting to be able to use the NEW Blogger site. I had not been able to until now because of the size of this blog (almost 400 posts over 2 plus years).

The new Blogger allows many additional capabilities with blogs like this (ie. tags, easier formatting). I hope to be able to revise all old post to take advantage of the new abilities and make this blog better.

With the start of 2007 this blog can enter a new era. Cool.

If you have any suggestion, of course they are all welcome.

Lets start.

Tag I'm It

OK, so you have probably seen that a virtual game of tag has been under way with several of the bloggers lately. Not wishing to be the one that ignores this (I understand that either my great-grandchildren would pay the price for this or I will develop an incurable ailment after the next full moon) I will contribute.

5 CAD related things that you may not know about me.

1. Actually, some may be aware that I was taught AutoCAD Release 9 by THE Lynn Allen back in October of 1987. (It is not easy taking classes from a kindergartener).

2. I taught AutoCAD to John Rodriguez (a current KETIV co-worker) back in 1990 where we worked together for the 1st time (KETIV is our 3rd different company working together. Clearly, one of us is stalking the other).

3. I wrote profile creation lisp routines that somehow were in more wide use among engineering companies in southern California than I had worked at. How does that happen? Why didn't I have a copyright or something?

4. While learning CAD, during one particular class, I created a drawing of a spider web and spider. I then modified the drawing so that when I did an undo the spider moved around the web and ate a fly. (Don't ask me why? Hey, the instructor said he had never seen that before!)

5. Creating 3D models in CAD completely correlates with my life-long fascination with miniatures.

I am going to join Anthony and tag Dan & Dave

Happy Holidays!

I wish to take a moment to wish you all a very joyous and special holiday season. I am taking a few days off. I hope to be re-energized for the start of the new year.

Blackberry Fumblefingers

It is not easy to admit certain things, but this item is not so hard. This past weekend I received a link from someone (I did not even catch the sender's name) to what I would believe to be a helpful webpage or site. Unfortunately, while trying to save the email via my Blackberry I seem to have deleted it. I am not yet incredibly proficient with the Blackberry, but I am not a novice either. I can not understand how this could have happened because the delete procedure requires a confirmation, (two button presses) and I thought I only pressed one button. Poof, it was gone.

Hey, now would be a good time to make the claim that I hear very often from CADD users.

"The software has a bug!"

Yeah, that's it, it was not me. Whew, do I feel better now. It was not my fault.

Anyway, if someone did send me a link to something worthwhile last weekend could I trouble you to send it again. You see, my Blackberry ate it.

Industry Comment - ENR Cover Story

The cover story of the May 8th issue of ENR Engineering News-Record was titled:

"The Hight Cost of Turnover"

It is a very interesting read regarding how, in this very competitive and staff depleted market, are companies attempting to hold on to their existing employees.

It boils down to employees have the upper hand and companies are getting very creative in efforts to make employees happy.

Just For Fun: What Do You See?

Now look closely.





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