Talk About Civil Engineering

A week ago, I literally lost my voice. I'd been fighting a cold and my voice started to wither away to barely a whisper. As someone in the field of communications, my voice is a critical component to my job. Losing my voice was a major issue. The fact that I was going to be conducting workshops on the subject of communications over the coming weeks, just made it worse.

However, these workshops were about the importance of the proverbial voice, not the inner workings of the throat and voice box. They provided grassroots training on how to be a voice for the civil engineering profession through infrastructure advocacy. The goal was to get participants actively thinking about how to advocate on behalf of the civil engineering profession as it relates to infrastructure.

Much of the discussion focused on water infrastructure, as the workshops were developed as part of ASCE's support of the new documentary, Liquid Assets, being produced by Penn State Public Broadcasting. The documentary tells the story of our water and wastewater infrastructure. To coincide with the documentary's launch, we are encouraging civil engineers to become advocates in their local communities, spreading the infrastructure message and advocating for improvement. During these workshops, nearly 100 attendees were instructed on the various steps involved in conducting a successful public outreach campaign, including how to identify and address local priorities, work with policy leaders and engage community partners. Of course, to truly be successful you have to have a strong message-and strong voices to deliver that message. 

Don't lose your voice when it comes to bringing important civil engineering issues to the forefront of people's minds. If you don't step up with the right message, someone else will step up with the wrong one. Are you ready to be a voice for your profession?

KG

While I imagine those words probably drum up memories of James Taylor's musical library, I feel they have particular meaning when discussing collaboration, networking and overall teamwork on public relations initiatives. Knowing you have a friend or a colleague in another area of the country who has the same drive to succeed with local public relations projects is comforting because you know you are not alone, entering into what can be an intimidating venture.

Earlier this month, ASCE's communications department staff conducted two public relations training workshops, one in Washington, D.C., and the other at Purdue University in Indiana. During these workshops, 75 civil engineers received hands-on public relations training covering everything from media relations to public speaking. Throughout the course of both training workshops, attendees shared their public relations experiences, from media interviews gone awry to their companies' community service projects. Looking around the room, many attendees nodded in agreement as they had "been there" and knew what is was like to deal with difficult questions from reporters or the amount of work involved in leading a community project. Others who hadn't had these experiences asked a lot of questions, the most common being "what did you do in that situation?" This is where the PR Network comes in.

The main purpose of ASCE's public relations training for civil engineers program is to build a network of support of civil engineers across the country. This PR Liaison Network will include access to a listserv where ASCE communications department staff as well as these PR liaisons can share ideas on new projects, become informed on public relations trends and explore how the practice of public relations is a critical component of the civil engineering profession. ASCE staff is dedicated to supporting this network and will offer assistance in jump starting local public relations activities.

To learn more about how to get involved in the PR Network, you can contact me at kgorscak@asce.org. After all, it's good to know that you've got a friend...or a whole network of them!

KG