Coalition Members Drive ACEC Engagement 

Late last month, ACEC’s Coalitions held their Winter Conference in Houston, where we were pleased to welcome a number of first-time attendees and sponsors. Our Coalitions are peer networks organized around firm size, professional discipline, and shared interests that allow engineering leaders to collaborate on business challenges, policy issues, and emerging industry trends. Coalitions bring together engineering professionals from every region and discipline, and they do it in a way that strips away the noise. As Chair-elect Dan Larson told conference attendees of the Coalitions, “…they are a way of extending your reach without increasing your overhead. They open doors that sometimes can be harder to access alone.”

Our Coalitions reflect the fundamental truth that no single firm, discipline, or perspective is sufficient to meet the demands that have been placed on our industry. ACEC’s membership is a mosaic of specialties, each indispensable and each incomplete on its own. Coalitions are a ready-made brain trust composed of people who bring different expertise but share a common purpose. Someone from a different region sees a problem from a different angle. Someone from another discipline names a pressure you’ve been feeling in your own firm but hadn’t yet articulated. In Coalitions, diversity of experience isn’t a complication. It’s the point. It’s an opportunity to turn isolated frustration into collective clarity. 

What makes Coalitions truly powerful is that they don’t disappear when the conference room empties and everyone goes home. The engagement is year-round. The questions keep coming, and so do the answers. This is a network that doesn’t just show up for the big conferences. It’s also there in the in-between moments where you need a sounding board, a resource, or just the reassurance that there are others on the same journey. 

The engagement continues through roundtables and Advocacy Connections, which members can join virtually at no cost. Coalitions also feature online education sessions that offer PDHs. Upcoming sessions will address topics such as drone policy, generative AI applications, updates to ALTA/NSPS surveying standards, collaborative project delivery risk, and affordable housing development. In addition, the Small Firm Coalition continues to host its most popular series in collaboration with PSMJ on managing small projects. 

Coalitions don’t just gather people. They equip them. Participation is included with ACEC membership. If you have any questions about joining, please contact Michelle Kroeger at mkroeger@acec.org or join online.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say about our Coalitions, the phrase that kept coming to mind was “widening the tent” of our federation and, in so doing, widening the tent of our industry. Perhaps that phrasing was on the brain because last Sunday was International Women’s Day, which coincides with Women’s History Month. That bigger tent matters, because no organization or industry has ever advanced by narrowing its circle. We advance by engaging with others who see the world differently and ask the questions no one else thought to ask. Women’s History Month serves as a reminder that a big tent isn’t a catchphrase. It’s the infrastructure of innovation.  

Finally, a happy announcement and a heartfelt thanks. For more than 40 years, the Trendy Awards (Trendys) have showcased outstanding marketing and communications campaigns and initiatives in the association community. I am pleased to share that ACEC was awarded three Trendys last week honoring our 2025 Annual Report, our catalog calling for Engineering Excellence Award submissions, and our online Seller Doer course. It’s no coincidence that each of these accolades reflects the achievements, leadership, and progress of our federation. Our work is possible because our volunteer leaders give their time, our committees and coalitions give their guidance, and our members give us purpose.  

It’s that sense of purpose that contributed to ACEC National’s recent selection by Washington Business Journal as one of the Greater Washington Area’s top 100 Best Places to Work. (There are approximately 650 businesses of our size in the area, and ACEC was among the top 35.) Honorees are chosen by employee satisfaction, connection to organizational mission, and optimism for its future. Again—everything we do is about serving our members. It’s what drives our team to deliver. Awards are wonderful, but it’s really about telling your story, celebrating what you’ve done, and helping open doors to what you’ll do next.