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June 24, 2011
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Read Michael Shilale's
Remarks
"Thank you to the
board of the New York State Society of Professional
Engineers for selecting me as ‘Citizen of the Year”
and thank you to my friends at the Rockland County
Chapter for nominating me. I am both humbled and
honored to receive this award.
We have so many challenges affecting us as engineers
and as architects, I believe that now more than ever
we need to work together better to combat them.
Whether we are talking about Design Build, onerous
contract indemnification clauses, or the largest
building department in the State (NYC Department of
Buildings) acting as judge, jury and executioner
when it comes to professional licenses, we need to
focus on our similarities not our differences.
I am reminded of the old joke that describes
architects as generalists and engineers as
specialists. As a young architect we start out
knowing a few things about a great many disciplines
and as we get older and wiser we learn less and less
about more and more until we know nothing about
everything. Engineers on the other hand are
specialists, who start out knowing a great deal about
a few specialized disciplines, as they get older and
wiser learn more and more about less and less until
they know everything about nothing.
It now seems we all need to be both generalists and
specialists, as well as lobbyists, financing
experts, marketing directors and even attorneys in
order to perform our day to day jobs.
But I believe if we work together as professionals
and professions, we can rise up and confront these
challenges head on - I believe we can secure our
position as leaders in the design and construction
industry and bring more value to our projects and I
believe we can protect, better than anyone else, the
economic and environmental well being of our clients
and our communities."
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