About CASE
Our mission is to improve the practice of structural engineering by reducing the frequency and severity of claims.
Our vision is to be the leading provider of risk management education and technology for use in the practice of structural engineering.
Council of American Structural Engineers History
During the mid to late 1980's, structural engineering firms experienced incredible increases in the cost of their professional liability insurance, much more than experienced by other disciplines. Structural engineers had become the "bad boys" of the insurance world, much the same as geotechnical engineers were a couple decades earlier.
In 1987 Lester Smith, then president of ACEC, (then called the American Consulting Engineers Council) decided that some special action was warranted in order to correct imbalance of insurance costs for structural engineers. He felt the structural engineers within ACEC could best address this problem themselves. The necessary changes were made in ACEC that would allow "coalitions" to exist that could charge dues, raise money and organize "mini" trade associations within ACEC.
A meeting was arranged that year in a Denver Airport hotel that included ACEC structural engineers, representatives from insurance companies DPIC and Victor O. Schinnerer Inc. The insurance representatives laid out what was necessary to improve the liability risks of structural engineers. The engineers picked a name – Coalition of American Structural Engineers (Coalition was later changed to Council), recruited several hundred ACEC structural firms, appointed several committees, and thus the beginning of CASE.
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