President’s Blog

A message from our 2020-2021 President, Brent Redmon

Presidents Message
July 6, 2020
Hello! For those that don’t know me, my name is Brent Redmon and for the third time, I am proud to be Atlanta Chapter president of the Construction Specifications Institute. We continue to have strong leadership as I am flanked by Past President Jo Ann Hathcox of Smallwood (Thanks for your Service!) and President Elect Robin Murphy of PPG (Thanks for stepping up!). Thanks to the rest of the Board of Directors and our fabulous committee chairs, we are a strong and healthy chapter both financially and functionally. A couple of my goals this year are to really re-engage the Atlanta Chapter Foundation as a true asset to the chapter and to show our strength by achieving the Outstanding Chapter Commendation in 2021 (CONSTRUCT 2020 has been turned into a virtual event – FYI). Of course, we are not without our challenges. The Covid-19 virus has clearly not gone away fully and may be something we need to contend with for the foreseeable future. Let me reassure you that your Board will continue to monitor and analyze what are safe best practices for the Chapter as well as provide you the products and services that help you continue to be better.

I will also be using some executive privilege this year. I have decided that our theme for the year will be _SUSTAINABILITY_. As Chairman of the Sustainable Design Collaborative Atlanta (SDCA), a sister organization our Chapter supports, I plan to join our forces and use the SDCA toolbox of data to really explore all of the different meanings behind this term. Our friends at the US Green Building Council do a good job of LEED certification and education, but we at SDCA have learned that this is the tip of the iceberg and I plan to encourage our membership to embrace these concepts as Sustainability is a growing trend in the national AEC industry. For this month as we plan for the Summer Work Session (everyone is welcome to attend, details will be on the website) I want to propose the Sustainable concept for us to consider to be ‘Equity’. How does your workspace/project process encourage and support equity in a sustainable pathway? Do you have Sustainable best practices for this? If you have not read the Institute statement or the AIA Georgia statement on the current environments – you should!

I will leave you with my personal statement to the SDCA Board:
What I will offer you is to remind you of something we have always been successful at – understanding the full power of the word Sustainable. We have always taught ourselves to expand the meaning of that word from design to connections to community and held each other accountable in that goal. It is prudent now that we remember that Sustainable also carries with it the characteristics of diversity, equity, unity and kindness. In that line of thinking, I would expect that all of you will use your voice of leadership in your sphere of influence with both colleagues and friends to champion how our brand of Sustainable can be a part of your conversations to clearly identify problems and then craft complete solutions that enable those around you to do more, do better and do the most good.
“Information developed becomes knowledge – Knowledge with experience becomes wisdom – Wisdom results in a better built (Sustainable) environment. [CSI PDPG 2018]”