CHAPTER CONNECTIONS
If at every quarterly meeting you have the same faces and
same conversations, it grows stale. Getting new faces and
new organizations involved keeps people attending.
And so the networking opportunities provided by the chapter are
definitely the most valuable for me.
But it’s neat to see the background of what jobs are getting done
in your area. Whether it be a civil engineering job, for example in
the New Orleans area, we’re constantly getting our flood protection
rebuilt by the Corps – getting more in-depth understanding about
what goes on behind-the-scenes with the flood protection, or, say,
with a new building in town, that’s good information. Being able to
hear that information and figure out where our company’s equipment
can fit into that is important.
What do you personally enjoy most about being able
to work in the driven pile industry?
SS: The days are not a carbon copy of each other – very seldom
do you run into the same problem or same type of job. They’re
all unique, and you can’t wake up in the morning and know what
you’ll be doing tomorrow, because it’ll change. The questions on
the other end of the phone are never the same. It keeps you on your
toes and keeps you from getting bored!
How can the PDCA Gulf Coast Chapter be of even
better value to members in the future?
SS: Continuing to be a resource on the technical side to keep engineers
thinking about the driven pile.
But continuing to grow is important, because if the chapter isn’t
growing, it’s going to see a decline in membership or attendance.
At the tail end of my time on the board, we started having a meeting
in Biloxi on the Gulf Coast to draw more membership from
coastal Mississippi and Alabama, as well as still having meetings in
Baton Rouge to try to draw from the western part of the territory.
If at every quarterly meeting you have the same faces and same
conversations, it grows stale. Getting new faces and new organizations
involved keeps people attending. t
34 | ISSUE 1 2020 www.piledrivers.org
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