Michael Shilale congratulates all of this year's award winners

 

Michael Shilale receives the 'Citizen of the Year' award from Louise Carosi Doyle, PE
President, NYSSPE

 

List of all winners on NYSSPE Website

 

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."

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 
  © 2011 MICHAEL SHILALE ARCHITECTS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED