Orange County Branch Newsletter

January 2015

President's Message

ASCE OC Has A History To Be Proud Of

By Gary Gilbert, PE, GE



The ASCE Orange County Branch (OC Branch) is in the process of a major upgrade to our website as you may have noticed on a recent visit.  As with anything related to IT, there are some quirks to be worked out and we appreciate your patience as our volunteer workforce completes this project over the next six months.  The main driver behind the change of the website is to make it more mobile friendly.  Since our last upgrade, there has been a large increase in the use of mobile devices and more people are using their mobile devices to view webpages.  What excites me about the change to the website is that we do not lose the historical content already on the website, because of the forethought of Josh Nelson, PE and other past presidents who invested time and money into a website that can be built upon by future generations of ASCE OC Branch members.

 

The website is an excellent place to store historical information about the OC Branch.  We recently realized that some of the history of the OC Branch may be lost.  Currently, we have historic newsletters from 2006 to present.  If you or someone you know has newsletters prior to 2006 we would be interested in making a copy so we can add to our website for present and future generations to read.  The website committee could also use help scanning old newsletters and adding them to the website.  In addition, our History & Heritage committee is looking for members to assist with looking for interesting articles from past newsletters that we could republish in future newsletters.

Related to the historic newsletters, we are actively collecting information on the Orange County Branch’s past presidents.  A new webpage has been created for the past presidents http://www.asceoc.org/committees/past_presidents and we are starting the process of collecting information about each one to include on our website.  We want to start by adding the articles our past presidents wrote when they we were part of the executive board.  We would also like to start preparing presentations for the past presidents, starting with our first president Harold Springer that we could present at our History & Heritage/Student Fellowship Night in November.  The OC Branch has been a leader in the LA Section since its founding in 1954 and we would like to have a historical record of the individuals who helped us achieve what we have accomplished today.

 

As I discussed in my previous secretary’s column in April 2012, http://www.asceoc.org/newsletter/article/secretarys_column_april_2012 I had the opportunity to work with Fred Meier on applying to have John Wayne Airport recognized as a Historical Civil Engineering Landmark.  During this experience, I found that Orange County has a rich history of innovative civil engineering projects that the public and young engineers may be interested in learning more about.  If members have access, we would like the opportunity to visit historical infrastructure sites and add more interesting details and better photographs to the website.  We also want to document historical civil engineering projects even if they are not old enough to be a Historical Civil Engineering Landmark.

Isamar Escobar did an excellent job starting a video about the history of infrastructure and the engineers who helped design it last year.  We would like to build upon her hard work and create new videos we could premier at future History & Heritage/Student Fellowship Nights.  Whether it is interviewing experienced engineers on the work they performed in the past on projects or editing the footage.  The History & Heritage committee would be greatly appreciative to any help you could provide.

 

Finally, the Orange County Branch is looking for two individuals to be co-chairs for the History & Heritage committee to help coordinate the initiatives the executive board has started. If you are interested in helping this committee, please contact me at Gary@diazyourman.com or Penny Lew at Penny.Lew@ocpw.ocgov.com.

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