Message from ACOPNE President Lori Brownell

Dear ACOPNE Colleagues:

WE ARE ACOPNE. A mission-driven community of professionals — working hand in hand with ASCE Civil Engineering Certification (CEC) and ASCE Coasts, Oceans, Ports, & River Institute (COPRI) — engaged to develop leaders, advance technology, advocate lifelong learning, and promote the civil engineering profession. As your 2022-2023 ACOPNE President, I am honored to Serve, Collaborate, and Engage with our collective community.

SERVE. This year’s ACOPNE Board of Trustees includes an amazing conglomeration of cross-functional (and heavily credentialed!) engineers dedicated to serve you. Over the next few months, Coastal, Ocean, Ports, and Navigation Representatives (Daoxian, Puneet, Charlie, and Rob) will reach out individually to request feedback on how we can serve you and our organization better. Please take a few minutes of your time to respond (or proactively reach out to any other Board of Trustees members), so we can actively adjust our agenda for the year ahead.

Collaborate. We have a couple of exciting announcements on the collaboration front.

• Based on a Board recommendation (thank you Ahmed!), we have developed an ASCE Collaborate page (Academy of Coastal Ocean Port & Navigation Engineers Collaboration Network) that is immediately available to all ACOPNE members (via your ASCE username and password) to network and discuss all things ACOPNE.
• On a monthly basis, we plan to spotlight ACOPNE Diplomates on our LinkedIn site. If you are an ACOPNE Diplomate and are involved in a significant project that you would like to showcase to our +1,200 followers, please reach out to [email protected]. 
• We have updated our ACOPNE outreach PowerPoint to ASCE CEC marketing standards. If you attend a meeting or conference and can incorporate ACOPNE Board Certification, consider using this messaging for outreach to others in our industry.  

Engage. Engagement is the foundation of our practice – engagement with our owners, our clients, and peers – to achieve our collective vision for making the impossible, possible!

• At the COPRI Ports Conference in September 2022 we had the opportunity to have our first ACOPNE Induction Ceremony in three years and witnessed, for the first time ever, all COPRI award winners were also ACOPNE board certified engineers. If you wish to become the next award winner, a number of COPRI award applications are due soon.
• For those of you not aware, the ASCE Board of Direction unanimously approved the Civil Engineering Certification (CEC) Bylaws at its meeting in October 2022. This is a monumental and positive step forward for ASCE, CEC, and ACOPNE. I encourage you to read the updated bylaws and reach out to our CEC President (also a former ACOPNE and COPRI President), Andrew Cairns, P.E., D.PE, M.ASCE if you have any questions.
• Finally, as always, we encourage you to continue to outreach and nominate engineers deserving of ACOPNE board certification. Growing our organization will have a direct benefit on the trust, safety, and quality in our industry.

Thank you.

Lori Brownell, P.E., D.NE, F.ASCE
Board Certified Navigation Engineer

ACOPNE President
Director, Channel Improvement
PORT HOUSTON