Ken O'Dell, SE
President

President’s Message April 2020

As I contemplate the last few weeks and the SEAOSC weekly updates issued as we transitioned to remote Work-from-Home satellite offices, I’m struck by the word “transition”. My Webster’s New College Dictionary defines transition as “an act, process, or instance of changing from one state, form activity, or place to another”. However, instead of focusing on the changes we just underwent to reshape how we conduct business and interact with our families, I thought I would look to the transition of the seasons that April and May bring to California.

Growing up, my family looked to Spring as a time of renewal. Each spring, my father would hitch a trailer to the back of the family station wagon and the seven of us, Mom, Dad, my 4 siblings, and I would pile in and head off to the local nursery. There, each of us picked out a plant that would become ours to care for throughout the year. Inevitably, most of my plants died off in the early years as many other activities distracted me from watering them through the hot Livermore summers. However, each year, Dad would hook up the trailer and we’d do it all over again.

Finally, as I grew up, my plants started to survive as I learned that renewal wasn’t automatic but required constant care and nurturing. My plants needed to be watered in the summer, pruned in the fall, protected from frost in the winter and if everything went well, they would bloom new again in the spring. Up until he passed away, the yearly nursery trip was something that Dad looked forward to, and back we would go to the same local nursery to pick a new next plant for the cacophony that was to be O’Dell landscaping.

So, what does Ken’s trip through nostalgia mean to SEAOSC members? It strikes me now that Dad was teaching great life lessons; if you don’t take care to nurture the simple things, taking care of the big ones will be even more difficult. As we all sit in remote locations, it is important to remember to reach out to each other and connect for that personal touch. This is the touch we miss by not being in a common office space, sitting around the breakroom table, or saying the quick hello in the hallway…“how was your weekend?” When we are remote, our conversations tend to focus on how is the project doing, is the system working for you, are you being efficient, do you have enough bandwidth…? In these connections we are missing the intangible care and nurture that simple personal contact provides. I’m willing to bet, each of us pride ourselves on having a unique “company culture”, and I’m equally willing to bet that culture grew from the interconnectedness of personal interaction as life happens at the office.

The other thing Dad taught me was that relationships matter, especially as situations change. Even as the mega-home improvement stores moved into town with nursery items at discounted prices, Dad kept taking us back to the same local merchant who had been supporting the O’Dell spring planting frenzy for years. The personal relationship meant something, but it was not developed over the phone or by text or email, it was the personal connection of bringing a family in to build something… us kids thought we were building a garden; Dad knew we were building the capacity to care about someone else. In that simple idea, he instilled the need and goal to serve other people.

As structural engineers we serve society and our communities in ways even we do not fully understand and in more ways than we outwardly promote. To me that is at the heart of what we do and who we are. As someone else often says “we save lives every day”, but we do it behind the wrap. This often means we don’t get the recognition we deserve, yet when given the opportunity to receive recognition we most often step away from the limelight. People say this is because we are introverts… I tend to believe it is because we have a spirit of service that goes beyond personal gratification.

As we enter the Spring Season, for many, a special time of renewal; I encourage you to seek an opportunity to reach out to a co-worker, client, neighbor, or SEAOSC colleague and renew a relationship that has been disconnected by our new (temporary) reality. This is one of the benefits of membership, connections and relationships with fellow engineers. Reach out and stay connected, and soon we will be back to sharing great stories before the refreshments get warm.