May The Fourth Be With You From CMA!
May 4, 2022
News
CMA Ranked 33rd in Top Workplaces Award
May 4, 2022
News
CMA has been named a South Florida Top Workplace by the Sun Sentinel! CMA was recognized at the Top Workplaces Awards event held on Wednesday, April 27 and ranked 33rd in the Small Employer Group (35 – 125 employees in South Florida). CMA was also featured in the Sunday, May 1 edition of the Sun Sentinel in the annual Top Workplaces special section. The event was held at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel & Convention Center in Coral Springs, FL.
The anonymous survey uniquely measures 15 drivers of engaged cultures that are critical to the success of any organization: including alignment, execution, leadership, and connection, just to name a few. Thank you to all of our employees who completed this survey! For more information, please visit https://topworkplaces.com
Happy Arbor Day from CMA!
April 29, 2022
News
Happy Administrative Professionals Day to our CMA Administrative Assistants, Accounting, IT and Marketing staff!
April 27, 2022
News
CMA Principal Engineer Suzanne Dombrowski Honored at ASCE Event
April 22, 2022
News
Congratulations to CMA Principal Engineer Suzanne Dombrowski, P.E., ENV SP who was recently named the ASCE Palm Beach Branch 2022 Engineer of the Year! She was honored at the 2022 Engineers in Government Night on Thursday, April 21 at the Boynton Beach Arts and Cultural Center. In addition, CMA intern Sara Hollenbeck, E.I., was awarded a scholarship! CMA Project Engineer Justin Tagle, P.E., LEED AP helped organize the evening’s festivities, and CMA Associate Engineer Nickolas Musick, E.I., presented the scholarships. The event honors the accomplishments and contributions of engineers in public and private practice in Palm Beach County. For more information, please visit https://branches.asce.org/palmbeach/
Happy Earth Day from CMA!
April 22, 2022
News
Happy Easter from CMA!
April 15, 2022
News
Peter M. Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, FACEC Running for 2023 ASCE President
April 11, 2022
News
Running for President-Elect for American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Peter Moore is combining his 25 years of service to the engineering profession, his dedication to ASCE, and coupled with his strong leadership background in business and the non-profit world, to support his candidacy. Peter’s Vision Statement for ASCE is available online and focuses on Accountability (fiscally), Advocacy (efficacy) and Accessibility (diversity). He believes strongly in the idea that student membership satisfaction and conversion is the key to the long-term success of the organization. Having led a successful civil engineering firm for 20 years, Peter is determined to provide a lasting legacy to ASCE and the Civil Engineering Industry as a whole.
Currently, Peter serves as the President and CEO of Chen Moore and Associates, an approximately 100-person multidisciplinary firm in the Southeast US, particularly Florida. Having been with the firm for over 22 years, Peter helped grow the firm from three people to its current size with a combination of strong vision and the highest quality consulting.Please visit https://www.asce.org/about-asce/elections to vote!
SunSentinel Mention
April 2, 2022
Blog
Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, FACEC
President, Chen Moore and Associates
As published by the Sun Sentinel on April 2, 2022
We are barely scratching the surface. What’s next for our nation’s infrastructure? | Opinion
On Nov. 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) into law. The White House has considered this to be “a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness.” As a civil engineer, I give credit to all the politicians involved in creating excitement around infrastructure funding. We can point to this act as only progress, and we can now begin to measure the impact of this investment and, more importantly, we can begin to measure the multiplicative return on investment that is well-documented from past investments. And from what we can measure, a trillion dollars doesn’t go too far.
Despite all the appreciation that I have as a civil engineer and a citizen, the IIJA barely the scratches the surface of our nation’s needs, and if this is the only investment in infrastructure in this generation, the United States will fall even further behind on the world stage. This is evident on a couple of levels.
When the average person hears about a $1.2 trillion investment, it sounds more than sufficient to meet our needs, but in reality, it falls far short. The first example of this shortfall is the fact that, of the $1.2 trillion, only $550 billion is actually new money programmed to be spent on transportation, water and power infrastructure and pollution cleanup. The remainder, more than half, is simply regular annual spending on infrastructure projects.
Drawing on the technical knowhow of its membership, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) produces independent reporting on America’s infrastructure for the benefit of both our decision makers and the average citizen. Every four years, ASCE’s Report Card for America’s Infrastructure depicts the condition and performance of American infrastructure in the familiar form of a school report card, assigning letter grades based on the physical condition and needed investments for improvement. While this publication produces bite-sized pieces of information that help guide decision making, the accompanying Failure to Act Study provides the economics behind the grades.
Based on the latest Failure to Act Study, the total needs for the nation based on current trends and extended until 2029 are just short of $6 trillion ($5.937 trillion to be exact), while funding levels, inclusive of the IIJA, which was passed after the study was published, are closer to $4 trillion.
Even worse, the Failure to Act Study highlights that, without action, by 2039, failing infrastructure will cost the US $10 trillion in gross domestic product, over 3 million jobs and $2.24 trillion in exports. This further dries up the pool of funds available for investment in not only infrastructure, but any other needs that our country faces. Keep in mind 2039 is only 17 years away, which is less than any current timeframe considered to be a “generation.”
Infrastructure spending obviously benefits engineers, but infrastructure spending has a return on investment that also benefits the greater population. Direct benefactors obviously include material suppliers, equipment manufacturers and construction workers, but secondary impacts push down to those who mine or farm the materials, those who build the equipment, and those who feed, equip and train the construction workers. Overall improvements, particularly to increase reliability, benefit the logistics and manufacturing industries overall. Finally, general benefits to the average person include reduction in commuting, traffic calming and other time benefits. Every dollar invested in infrastructure returns between three and seven times to the overall economy.
We have the needs. We’ve proven the investment pays returns. Thank you, but isn’t it time we say what’s next?
Peter Moore is president and CEO of Chen Moore and Associates, a civil engineering firm specializing in water resources, water and sewer, landscape architecture, transportation, planning and irrigation and electrical, environmental and construction engineering services.
SunSentinel Mention
March 18, 2022
Blog
Peter Moore, P.E., F.ASCE, FACEC
President, Chen Moore and Associates
Last week: This past week, President Biden signed into law the appropriations behind the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), providing significant funding for the next five years for various infrastructure initiatives. This includes a 43% increase in funding for highway programs, a 61% increase for public transportation projects and a 137% increase for airport construction. Each of these is a significant “down payment” towards the nearly $2.2 Trillion in funding gap between what is authorized and what is needed according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ recent 2021 Failure to Act study. Let’s keep the momentum going!
Looking ahead: Next week I’ll spend my 21st consecutive year judging a civil engineering competition called the Concrete Canoe. The concept is to gain a hands on knowledge of the design, construction and racing of a canoe that is made of concrete products that floats. Since the early 1970’s, experiments in light weight concrete led to the development of concrete canoes, but the first National competition was held in 1988. The competition includes a technical paper, presentation and aesthetics, going well beyond the typical purposeful designs that engineers are typically synonymous with. These are our next generation of infrastructure leaders.
