The second half of 2024 was a bustling time for our civil, transportation, and structural teams. Between career fairs and conference attendees, our colleagues were out and about. Here’s a quick recap!

 

Career Fairs

Workforce development continues to be a challenge for our industry; we have a people challenge, not projects. How are we going to meet the staffing needs for the growing number of projects that are available to us?  To address this, SSR is committed to continuous onboarding of new colleagues. As a firm, we attended 20+ career fairs in 2024, many of which had an emphasis on infrastructure positions. We continue to find ways to get in front of students to educate them about consulting engineering and the plethora of options available to them post-graduation. Several colleagues visited Murray State and UT-Martin recently. Also, Amanda Blankenship spoke to the Intro to Civil class at Mississippi State University, giving them insight into bridge design. 

 

KY/TN Water Professionals Conference 

The Kentucky/Tennessee Water Professionals Conference continues to be a favorite among our colleagues to attend. This year’s conference set a record for most SSR attendees and set an overall conference attendance record!  We continue to see the value in learning from our clients, colleagues, and communities through KY/TN project presentations in addition to building our team culture and creating space for the water team to celebrate the hard work we’ve put in. We hope you were able to join us this year for our client celebration with some axe throwing and incredibly realistic racing simulators or catch up with us at our baseball themed booth (a nod to the famous Louisville slugger) and participate in some friendly competitions.  Congrats to Troy Holland of Clarksville Gas & Water for the fastest pitch registered! We’re already starting to plan for this year’s conference in Knoxville, let us know if you have fun ideas!

 

Luke Williams celebrated a big career milestone, accepting the gavel and is leading the KY/TN Section AWWA this year as Chair.  

 

 

 

 

ACEC Engineers Conference 

Our transportation, structural, and water teams were all present this year for the ACEC Tennessee Engineer’s conference in Franklin.  Rob Lantz presented the latest PFAS updates in the water track. SSR continues to remain committed to staying involved in ACEC. We currently have several active roles and look for ways to get our colleagues further involved in the ACEC community.  

 

Memphis Office Cookout 

Our second year of hosting the annual Memphis client cookout at Shelby Farms proved to be a success. It was a beautiful day, and we appreciate all the clients, colleagues, and fellow engineers that joined us.

 

TCAPWA 

Luke Williams and Sam McCollum were able to join the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Public Works Association by attending their annual conference in late October in Chattanooga. Luke and Sam connected with clients we serve from west to east Tennessee and celebrated the hard work and efforts the public work employees do on the frontlines of our communities.  

 

ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards

SSR is always a proud supporter of ACEC Tennessee’s Engineering Excellence Awards. As a presenting sponsor, we filled two tables with SSR colleagues and industry friends. We always enjoy our time with our ACEC family. The EEA Gala was preceded by the first ever Vertical Conference for ACEC TN, which was a great success.

Two SSR projects were recognized during the EEA ceremony:

• Bowling Green Municipal Utilities was the Grand Winner in the Water Resources – Large Division for the BGMU Water Treatment Plant Expansion project
• Metro Water Services took home the Honor Award in the Special Projects category for the Brown’s Creek Force Main project

 

Giving Tuesday

SSR continues to support KY/TN AWWA’s Giving Tuesday Bowling Fundraiser.  This year we had four bowling teams between colleagues in Nashville and Memphis.