WBC Chairman

Thank you, Greg, and thanks to everyone for your vote of confidence this evening. I am deeply honored to be elected the 87th Chairman of the Board for the Washington Building Congress.

I would like to congratulate my fellow officers and directors who were also elected this evening. In particular, I’d like to welcome our 5 new board members. I look forward to your energy, your fresh perspectives and to working with you on some new initiatives in the coming year. Congratulations to all!

At this time, I would like to recognize and thank Greg Koger for his exceptional term as 2024 Chairman of the Board and for his many years of dedication and service. Greg, you have lead us with patience and wisdom. You have a gift for making us question our preconceived notions without offending anyone. It has been a pleasure working with you these years. On behalf of the WBC membership and leadership, it is my privilege to present to you with the past chairman’s walnut gavel box.

We have one last bit of important business:

We here at WBC have been blessed to have the kind of continuity that is rare in Washington, DC. In a city defined by change, Steve Kenton, our President, has been leading the organization since 1999 and Rita Reis, our Associate Director, has been the force that keeps WBC moving since long before most of us joined. Over the past – 28 years – Rita has organized every event you’ve attended, coordinated every Craftsmanship Awards program, and checked you in for every golf tournament. She does it all!
Her institutional knowledge… and her smile, are unparalleled.

As many of you know, Rita has decided to leave us this spring and return to Brazil to be with family. So tonight will be her final WBC Kickoff Ceremony. Luckily for us, Rita has agreed to stay through the Craftsmanship Banquet in the spring. So if you don’t get a chance to wish her the best tonight, you’ll have more opportunities in the future. But now, please join me in a round of applause to show her our gratitude for 28 years of service to this organization.

Rita, thank you for all you do. We look forward to enjoying your victor lap together.

And with every page turn, we celebrate what was… and we also welcome what will be. Stepping into Rita’s very big shoes, I am pleased to introduce you to Stacy Kidwell, our incoming Associate Director.

Stacy joins our team with a strong background in DC associations and a passion for the kind of hard work our members value. You’ll get to know her more over the coming year, but please take a moment tonight to introduce yourself and please take a moment now to welcome her to WBC.

Finally, I’d like to thank every one of you for coming out tonight and joining us as we kick off the 87th year of WBC. You are the heart and soul of this organization, and you bring your unique talents, knowledge and personalities to bear on everything we do.

Who We Are
For some of you, this is a “not-to-miss” event – one filled with history and tradition (and great oysters) – an event you may have attended for decades. For others of you, this might be your first introduction to Washington Building Congress and if so, we welcome you. For all of us though, it is an important opportunity to pause and remind ourselves of what it is we value, what we have accomplished together and in what direction we are headed.

I have been with Boston Properties for a quarter century and have been a WBC member for at least 20 of those years. Here is what I’ve learned about our industry and about WBC in that time:

We are a tight-knit community. Washington DC itself is a small town and those in this room collectively know everyone in our industry. More importantly, we take care of each other. You might witness that in the network of colleagues you meet here tonight or you might see it in the way our industry comes together in difficult times. During the pandemic, when construction was deemed essential work, we persevered by sharing our lessons and our ideas not only within our own companies, but also with our competitors to make sure our people stayed safe and well.

We also reach out and take care of the greater DMV community through programs like our collaboration with the Arlington Food Assistance Center or our involvement in Rebuilding Together. Right now, WBC members have been working for months to take a house near Tysons Corner and make it safe and secure for the family who lives there. Not long ago, we gathered nearly 70 tons of food for the Capital Area Food Bank. This is what WBC members do.

Our membership is broad and diverse and, because of that, it is full of great ideas. One thing that really differentiates WBC from most other organizations is the breadth of our membership. We are not just an organization of owners and brokers, nor one of just masons or just electricians. We cut across all aspects of our industry. This is where all trades come together and break bread with GC’s, owners, brokers, bankers, insurance agents, designers and engineers. (We even somehow let a few lawyers get in here).

We welcome the decision makers, those with years of experience, as well as the next wave of leaders, those so new to the industry that their fresh ideas aren’t constrained by years of doing things “the way we’ve always done them”. Our tent is open to all who touch the built world. When we encounter complex construction challenges, we reach out to each other to solve problems. It is this collaboration that leads us all to shared success.

Together, we create amazing places. The fabric of Washington DC and the rest of the DMV is literally built by the hands of WBC members. Anyone who lives, works or plays in Washington can’t help but experience your amazing work. There’s a sense of pride in what we do. Each year we honor the incredible talent and dedication contractors across the DMV through our Craftsmanship Awards and the Craftsmanship Hall of Fame. If you have never attended that ceremony, I urge you to treat yourself this spring. It is truly uplifting.

The fourth thing I’ll share is this – we know how to have fun. While many of the reasons for joining WBC are about business, when you get right down to it, the main reason we come out to events like this is because we like each other and we enjoy spending time together.

For those in other industries who have chosen to work from home full time – you’re missing out. In construction, we are blessed to be in a business that requires collaboration, requires teamwork, requires us to be on site. It means we get to spend time together, sharing our experiences and our family stories. The people we work with are friends and that very much includes the people in this room. In the end, isn’t that really what WBC is all about?

Challenging Times
There is so much good news for our industry, but there is also little doubt that we continue to endure challenges that date back to the pandemic- the challenges of getting workers back to the office, the impact that those empty buildings have on our city, and the challenge of getting new construction projects of any type to pencil.

Our resiliency as an industry certainly comes from anchoring our decision making in our shared history and values. Last year we hosted our Industry Titans event, where we heard from some of the most established leaders in our field – some of them with their names on the cranes (Jim Davis, Mark Smoot, Bill Calhoun from Clark, Lynne Stith Bennet from Coakley and Paul Mella from Dyna). They shared stories about past challenges and down economic times. But they were unanimous in their confidence that we would come through this cycle even stronger.

In short, they were not deterred about rising to meet the current challenges our industry faces. Whether that means entering new markets or finding new ways of building better, building safer, faster, or cheaper. Because, while we are an industry with a long history and (literally) ancient traditions, we are also one that is constantly evolving and open to change.

A Year of Change
Tonight we find ourselves back here at Columbia Country Club, celebrating our ties to the past. And at the same time, we look ahead to what will certainly be a year of change – for WBC, for our industry, and for our country.

For WBC, in addition to losing Rita and welcoming Stacey, we will likely be changing offices this year. The nature of our meetings and events has changed, so we are currently searching for new space that will meet those evolving needs and allow us to gather in new ways. We’ll be shifting some of our evening programs to the morning and exploring new venues. What works, we’ll keep. What has grown old, we will change.

There is good industry change on the horizon as well – the economy has finally started to shift and interest rates are lowering, making new projects viable again. There is real activity in the marketplace – we are doing more tours and leasing more space than we have since pre-covid times. The tide has undeniably shifted.

And of course, our country’s leadership is poised for change in only a few months. Regardless of what happens in November, change is a certainty.

Invitation
So I ask you tonight – what change would you like to see at WBC that would make it a more fruitful investment of your time and energy? How can this organization be most meaningful for you?

I Would Offer Just Two Suggestions
First, if you want to be an instrument of change and progress – to help steer the course of WBC – please, Join a Committee. This is where you make the biggest impact – both for WBC and for your own careers.

Because if you meet someone at Cactus Cantina and talk business over a beer, that’s great. Maybe you add a name to your rolodex. Maybe you give them a call the next day. But when you serve with someone on a committee, you get to know them at a much deeper level. You build trust through collaboration, through shared responsibility. And that trust is what will propel you from being a happy hour contact to an actual business partner. It is what allows you to pick up the phone when there is a problem and say, “Hey Melissa, or Hey Bill – I could really use your help on something.”

Quick personal story – for my first two decades at Boston Properties, we used the same controls contractor on every single project we built. They were excellent, they still are excellent, and we still partner with them regularly. But a few years ago, we were kicking off a million square foot project for one tenant. And that tenant wanted to use someone different – someone we had never worked with before. This was a 1 milliion sq ft fast-track job with very few drawings. Not the kind of project you typically want to take a risk on by introducing new partners. But as it turned out, the contractor our tenant wanted to use – well, we had served together for 3 years on a WBC committee and we had grown to trust each other through that collaboration. So we, of course, used them (or this story would be pointless) and they were incredibly successful. Now they are one of our preferred contractors for all future work. That is the kind of payoff that comes from working side-by-side in committee.

So in this year of change, make WBC work even better for you by getting even more involved. Committee involvement is not a heavy lift. The payoff is high – and I promise that you’ll get more out of it than you are asked to put in.

The second suggestion
I have is even more simple – bring a friend next time. As an organization, we have so much to offer – our programs, our speakers, our service projects. But mostly, mostly, we pride ourselves on our people. As I mentioned before, you’ll be amazed by who you can meet at WBC. One of the best ways you can make our association even better for you is to invite others to join us. Your network will grow as our membership grows. So bring your coworkers, definitely … but also bring people you work with from other trades. Bring your design team, bring your GC, bring your building owners… Bring people who share your interests, but also bring people with different ideas and different backgrounds, because that is how we are going to grow as an organization.

Most of our events are open to members and non-members, but this year, let’s endeavor to turn those non-members into members. The relationships we develop here at WBC undoubtably contribute to our growth and success – both on individual projects and on our career arcs. Both who you know and what you know very much remain important in this business.

In closing, I’ll just remind you that we have a lot to look forward to this year:

• Our charity golf tournament is around the corner,
• we have a number of great morning and evening programs coming up
• nominations for craftmanship awards are now open,
  (let’s be sure to honor those who have done good work in trying times)
• and of course we have an epic party planned for the holiday season.

I am very optimistic that the economic constraints that have impacted us all are lifting and I’m confident we will soon see cranes across the DMV skyline again and shovels back in the ground. The future – our future – is very bright.

So thank you all once again for your involvement in WBC and for being here tonight. I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming meeting or event. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.