Press Coverage

6 csengineermag.com MAY 2019 from the publisher Rising Stars & Drones When it Comes to Elevating the Industry, Participation is Key If you know me, you know I get excited about my place in the AEC industry and the potential it represents. I'm President and CEO of Zweig Group, a strategic advisor, an analyst and researcher, and an educator. With The Zweig Letter and C+S Engineer magazine, I'm also a publisher. With all these positions rolled into one, it would be easy to let the opportunities overtake my bandwidth. Sometimes they do! But for the most part I'm able to focus by asking one simple question: Am I elevating the industry? If so, I'm in. If not, I'm out. So, I take a look at the magazine and ask myself the same question, and these days the answer is a resounding yes. C+S just wrapped up the nominations for its Rising Stars, and the drone video contest, hosted by the magazine, has three finalists – among dozens of entrants – vying for a big trophy to be handed out this month. My team put in a lot of effort to make these programs possible. But for Rising Stars and the drone video contest to truly mean something, they need industry participation. Participation, after all, is a big part of the process of Elevating the Industry. To do it, you have to be part of it. And this year, we're seeing increased participation in all that we do. Nominations rolled in for Rising Stars, the annual celebration of the best and brightest in the fields of civil and structural engineering. Firms from across the country threw their hats into the ring. While the results of the judging, which is still ongoing, will not be announced in the magazine until August, I can tell you this: I took a sneak-peak at the nominees, and the Rising Stars candidates are all amazing! Professors, project managers, entrepreneurs and team leaders – all of them young, ultra-talented, and community-minded. They come from around the country and the world, men and women from firms large and small. Together, the 2019 Class of Rising Stars embodies Zweig Group's aim to Diversify, one of the five tenets – Diversify, Celebrate, Change, Promote, Educate – of the Elevate mission. The top candidates will be featured in our August edition as well as at our Elevate AEC Conference in Las Vegas, October 2-4, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort and Spa. We hope to see you there. Turning to the drone contest, I see another Elevate tenet in action – Change. Last year we tried something new. We sponsored a drone video contest. While participation was good, it was nothing compared to what happened this year, the second time around. There were many awesome examples of firms that are elevating the profession and the industry using this technology to differentiate their services. Differentiation fights against commoditization and is a key part of the change tenet of our mission. The number of submissions increased this year, as did the overall quality of the videos. In voting, people visited our website by the thousands. Instead of simply judging for ourselves and announcing the results, as we did last year, we took the top three vote-getting videos to the AUVSI XPONENTIAL conference in Chicago, where the audience determined the winner via live voting! You can see who won by checking out our Facebook page at @CSEngineerMag. How is that for Promoting and Celebrating achievements in our industry? I think the whole drone setup was neat. But to get it done the we way we did, my team had to change the way it did things. In other words, they had to practice what we preach here at Zweig Group by living up to the Elevate mission. This took outreach, partnerships, and a lot of extra work. And guess what? It worked. Don't ever be afraid to Elevate. It will always be in your best interests. CHAD CLINEHENS, P.E., is Zweig Group's president and CEO. Contact him at cclinehens@zweiggroup.com.

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