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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

This newsletter marks the onset of spring and with that is the beginning of a new legislative session. This session brings House Bill 1089 and Senate Bill 1940 which seek to reduce the current limits of liability exposure for architects, engineers and contractors from 15 years to 10 years.  This will bring Florida in line with most other states. Florida legislatures are also promoting the 21st Century Technology, Research, and Scholarship Enhancement Act through House Bill 1237 and Senate Bill 2084, which will help Florida increase our funding of math and science programs to keep our state a leader in technology and innovation. This effort coincides with the FES MathCounts program that allows students from around the state to compete for the title of Math Wizard. This event takes place in Orlando on March 31. The amount of Math talent, demonstrated by students who compete in this event is overwhelming and will hopefully continue to progress with support from our legislature.

Spring also signifies the efforts of both FES and FDOT to bring engineers together at their annual conferences.  These conferences are great opportunities to meet with fellow engineers (and old college friends) from around the state, hear the latest design and construction issues that affect our professional activities and catch up with the most recent changes being implemented that affect all our lives. The recent FDOT Construction conference brought to light the reason for the incredible increase in construction costs over the past few years. This is something we all have seen and is reflected in everything from housing costs to transportation.  The Florida Transportation Builders Association (FTBA) organized sessions for this year’s construction conference; the session included a panel made up of Contractors that presented the major reasons for increase in costs. These rising costs include, not only material costs but an increase in management costs that are a result of the changes implemented by FDOT for the Contractor Quality Control program or QC2000, a term most us have heard before. Rising costs continue to impact our daily lives by reducing the number of improvement projects for local roads and making housing prices so high that white collar workers are less likely to afford a home in our area. I want to close by quoting Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom/Blockbuster. "The information superhighway is a dirt road that won't be paved over until 2025."

I just wonder how much it will cost by then….

David Romano, PE
President – Calusa Chapter