Mike Circosta, P.E.

I am honored to have been recently inducted as this year’s President of the Westchester /Putnam Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers, Inc. Our Chapter is lucky to have such a dedicated group of professionals on our Board of Directors and in our Officer positions who give their time to our many charitable causes such as scholarships, MathCounts, Engineering Expo and many others.

Recently, I have discussed the Chapter’s role in addition to these charitable efforts with many of our Board Members and Officers with the goal of providing additional value to our members. I think we can all agree that in these times it is critically important that all financial expenditures, including your decision to renew your NSPE, NYSSPE and Chapter membership, need to be value driven.

To help answer this question, we consulted the NSPE website to revisit the functions of goals of the local Chapters under NSPE, where it states “NSPE local chapters offer engineers the chance to network and gain professional referrals through contacts with colleagues in their communities.”

Our Chapter is one of the largest local Chapters in the country with over 250 active members. The best way to provide value for our Chapter members is to hear your ideas so we can decide how to implement them. Please email your suggestions to westputpe@live.com for your Board’s consideration!

To start, we are changing the format of our monthly PDH meetings to become PDH / Networking events. The meetings will be held on the 3rd Wednesday of each month and will be either a breakfast format in the morning or an evening cocktail reception with hors d'oeuvres to reduce registration costs and to minimize disruptions to everyone’s busy day. Each meeting will have a ½ hour networking session to run concurrent with registration and the PDH session will follow.

Please help us generate interesting topics for these meetings by emailing your ideas to westputpe@live.com.

To facilitate these and other programs, the Chapter has allocated our time and resources over the past year to enhancing our communications with our membership. Our new website ( www.westputpe.org ) is intended to be a summary of our various programs and events to keep our members updated of recent events. Our new email list system enables the Chapter to inform our members and other interested professionals / associates as they are added or organized. Please be sure to update your contact information in our mail list to remain informed of our events by visiting www.westputpe.org and using the “Join Our Email List” button in the lower left-hand corner of the home page. This is especially important since we are phasing-out US mailings to all members to reduce operating expenses.

Lastly, and perhaps most important, I would like to direct your attention to NSPE Executive Director Larry Jacobson’s article from the NSPE website that has been reprinted in our most recent newsletter. NSPE’s mission is to promote the practice of engineering and the public benefit of a licensed professional engineer’s involvement in matters of public health, welfare and safety.

When reading this article, I was startled, and perhaps a bit naïve, to learn licensed professional engineers historically have had limited involvement in the design, construction and oversight of key components of massive projects like the Deepwater Horizon rig; and that a policy requiring such involvement was enacted after the recent historic events in the Gulf of Mexico. My perspective, and assumption this was already a policy, may have been skewed by the many zoning ordinances I have read that legally require the seal of a licensed professional engineer on the plans and specifications of far less substantial designs, such as 2- lot residential subdivisions and four foot high retaining walls.

Our Chapter is committed to work with the NYSSPE, now in the capable hands of our friend and colleague, President. Louise Doyle, P.E., and with the NSPE to continue to promote the importance of the involvement of licensed professional engineers in designs, large and small, that can potentially impact public health, welfare and safety.

In closing, and in support of the need for more licensed professional engineers, I would like to share with each of you the NSPE’s Engineer’s Creed which has been read and pledged at each of NSPE’s national, state and local Officer / Board of Director’s Installation Ceremonies for decades, including our Chapter’s most recent ceremony this past June:
As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare.
I pledge:
To give the utmost of performance;
To participate in none but honest enterprise;
To live and work according to the laws of man and the highest standards of professional conduct;
To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.
In humility and with need for Divine Guidance, I make this pledge.

Respectfully
Rob Aiello, P.E.
President