President's Message: Serious Work
SBCA has a lot of momentum right now with the support of its board of directors
In December we did something SBCA hasn’t done for a while. We asked all our Board members to come to Houston, Texas for an in-person planning session. We did this for several reasons, but the main one was to recognize that each member of the Board has an important responsibility to help determine the direction of the organization and weigh in on what should be done to deliver the greatest value to our industry. It was two days of lively discussion, and it left me feeling very encouraged about not only the present, but also the future of SBCA and the industry.
One thing that struck me was our focus on innovation. While we decided last January to use innovation as one of the three main pillars of our strategic plan, it’s quite another to actually make it happen. Last year, we introduced the SBCA Innovation Grant that attracted 27 applicants to share their innovative equipment and process concepts. Vekta Automation’s Raking Framer won the 2023 grant, and Vekta received a free booth at BCMC to showcase their idea. Based on that success, SBCA is bringing back the grant in 2024 and may even choose multiple winners, letting BCMC attendees judge which concept is the most innovative.
Innovation comes from thinking outside the box, and one way to do that is to look outside the box of North America. Due to a very different labor environment in Europe, manufacturers there started focusing on automation decades before we did and adopted it more broadly than we have so far. To get a better understanding of what that looks like and generate discussion over what might work here in the United States, SBCA is hosting a European Innovation Tour April 11-18 and inviting its members to visit operations in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark.
Another thing that struck me at our Houston board meeting was the progress we are making on a different pillar of our strategic plan, demonstrating our expertise in structural building components and offsite construction. Education is the foundation of this pillar, which prompted the board to approve the creation of the Education Committee as a standing committee. To further support efforts to develop industry-leading online education programs for our Learning Management System (LMS), as well as timely and valuable live education for BCMC, Open Quarterly Meetings (OQMs), chapter meetings, and webinars, the board also approved hiring a Director of Education (see page 31).
Finally, I was impressed by the energy in the room while we met in Houston. There is clearly a lot of momentum behind the activities I mentioned above, but there is so much more going on throughout the organization. SBCA’s staff is in growth mode and it’s evident that our new distributed workforce model is helping us attract top-notch talent from across the country. SBCA’s focus for several years on bringing fresh faces and young talent into the organization through first the Emerging Leaders Committee, and now SBCA’s LaunchPad, has dramatically reduced the average age of SBCA’s Board and brought new energy to the association!
At the end of this month, on March 26-28, SBCA will be hosting its first OQM of 2024 in Fort Worth, Texas. If you’d like to learn more about SBCA’s initiatives, lend your passion and ideas to a particular topic, and start building relationships with some of the best and brightest in our industry, register today. I hope to see you there.
Jeff Taake, SBCA President