Letter from the president.

SHARE

I look back upon the year 2015 with a deep sense of satisfaction and pride for IAS, which not only accomplished its stated goals but exceeded them in many areas. IAS crossed the 800 mark of accredited entities at the beginning of the year and the influx of new clientele kept up throughout the entire year. This, coupled with a near-perfect renewal rate of existing clients, points to a vibrant organization that is assured of a very bright future. Towards the end of the year, three of our stalwarts, Patrick McCullen, chief technical officer; John Pakianadan, accreditation manager; and Nancy Libby, program manager, all retired from IAS after collectively contributing 76-plus years to the success of IAS and meeting the needs of its clients. We are deeply indebted to these fine folks for helping make IAS the organization it is today. At the beginning of 2016, IAS was restructured to prepare the organization for the important milestone of 1,000 accredited entities. Congratulations are in order for Mohan Sabaratnam, director of quality and accreditation; Sandi McCracken, senior program manager; Karthik Easwar, accreditation manager; Prasanth Ramakrishnan, principal accreditation officer; Patrick J. McCullen, assistant accreditation officer; and Radua Nazir, administrative assistant, for having taken on additional responsibilities to help transition us to the next elite status. Concurrent with the reorganization, one of our senior technical assessors, David Musselwhite, was inducted into the IAS family as deputy program manager. David is a licensed civil engineer with an abundance of experience in construction codes and safety standards and has earned the respect of the industry as a pragmatic problem solver. Please join me in congratulating the IAS staff for their continued loyalty to the organization. At the last Accreditation Committee hearings in Los Angeles in February, IAS embarked on a new initiative to identify opportunities to accelerate preparation of the global workforce to meet the ever-increasing demands of the marketplace. As has been shown very clearly in the U.S., there is a severe scarcity of qualified individuals to replace the spots left behind by the Baby Boomer generation. While digital technologies are replacing some of the lost talent, there is an ever-enlarging gap in the workforce when it comes to jobs that require the human touch, such as construction, healthcare, education, etc. The February meeting was also the last for chairman Thomas Phillips who served IAS with distinction for more than 10 years. In March, the IAS Board was reconstituted with addition of three new members to replace retiring members Isam Hasenin, Dr. Izz Eddin Katkhuda, Selso Mata and Melanie Adams. Our sincere thanks to these individuals for having given us so much of their time and talent during a critical growth period of the organization. I offer a special welcome to incoming new members Shahriar Amiri, Stephen Jones and Craig Morr. Finally, I just returned from a lengthy but successful overseas trip, which included visits to Sri Lanka, India and the U.A.E. The stay in India allowed me to enjoy a few glorious days with my mother before she bid goodbye to this world. While I was overcome with a sense of sorrow as the plane took off from the Indian soil, a sense of warm acceptance enveloped me because I knew I was coming back to work with the best group of people to prepare the next generation workforce for the global economy. C.P. (Chuck) Ramani, PE, CBO President International Accreditation Service