Highlights & Takeaways from our Annual Convention

To the ACEC Community,

A week out from our 2026 Annual Convention and Legislative Summit, what stays with me isn't the agenda. It's the 1,007 of you who showed up to do the work — in the sessions, on the Hill, at the gala — and who reminded me why this gathering matters. 

If there was a single thread running through last week, it was this: when the ground is constantly shifting and it's genuinely difficult to predict what comes next, the answer isn't to chase the chaos. It's to return to what's solid. Clean water. Efficient, safe roads and bridges. Treating people as people. These aren't small things. They are the whole thing.

Historian Jon Meacham set that tone on Monday, asking us to be willing to look at someone who holds a different view and see a person rather than an enemy or a problem to be defeated. The coarseness in our public life, he said, isn't someone else's problem to fix — it's another fundamental in need of attention.

That same return-to-fundamentals showed up everywhere I looked. Mike Walsh and the Research Institute's Firm of the Future study made the case that AI isn't replacing engineers — it's empowering them. More than 200 of you packed the breakout session that followed. Federal Highway Administrator Sean McMaster, then Politico's Jon Martin in conversation with former T&I Chairs Peter DeFazio and Bill Shuster, gave us a front-row seat to where the infrastructure debate is actually heading. Tuesday brought a deep dive on Progressive Design-Build and a frank conversation with the ACEC Life Health Trust on what's really driving health care costs. 

And then there was Tuesday night. The 59th Engineering Excellence Awards celebrated a record 240 projects and conferred our Award of Merit to Dr. Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders USA. The Grand Conceptor went to McMillen Inc. for the Klamath River Renewal — the largest dam removal in history, unlocking hundreds of miles of habitat along the California-Oregon border. The Klamath project isn't flashy. It required engineers to look at more than a century of accumulated consequence and ask not, "What can we build here?" but "What is broken, and can we fix it?" If you missed the gala, the project video is worth your time.

A few other moments worth marking from the week: Our Sunday Board meeting welcomed Chair Dan Larson and Chair-Elect Derek Clyburn and sent off outgoing Chair John Rathke with our thanks for a year of steady leadership. 

The Board also unanimously approved refinements to our strategic plan around four rising priorities — workforce, technology, licensure, and membership — that reflect where our industry is heading. And we had the chance to honor HED's Mike Cooper in person with the Distinguished Service Award he was unable to accept in San Diego last fall.