Welcome to a New Era for CSE

Consulting-Specifying Engineer is celebrating 20 years of excellence this year and as your new Chief Editor, I will work hard to build upon the history of excellence, relevance and timeliness. CSE already has in place a dynamic team of editors and publishing professionals, with the powerful and extensive resources of its parent company, Reed Elsevier and its divisions, Reed Business Information and Reed Construction Data. What I'm bringing to the table is 10 years of experience as a Chief Editor serving this industry—Professional Engineers—and a prior career as a research scientist in the fields of green buildings, building science and information technology.

I enjoy communicating and making connections—helping people solve problems and moving knowledge from where it is to where it's needed. I also enjoy helping develop new products, so in the near future you'll have opportunities to attend more CSE webcasts, subscribe to new eNewsletters and peruse new supplements and in-print offerings. The goals of any new products CSE launches will be to make your jobs easier and more efficient, more fulfilling, and more profitable. We're not here to cram your information space with stuff you already know or don't need.

Readers are already beginning to ask what changes are in store. CSE is a solid publication and will continue to be the only business publication written by professional consulting engineers for professional engineers. Whatever refinements come in the future will be after careful research and deliberation.

With these necessities attended to, allow me to articulate my mission and vision for CSE and the community it serves. Before I do, some context is needed. The buildings industry is facing some difficult issues. Construction and operating budgets and delivery schedules are tight and unforgiving. Competition for talented and experienced engineers is stiff. Expectations for performance (i.e., no errors) are merciless. Costs for energy and materials are escalating rapidly, and supplies could become unreliable in the near future if China and India continue their rapid pace of development. How buildings and communities are designed and constructed is being re-thought from the ground up. New equipment and equipment refinements are coming out all the time, and codes and standards are constantly changing. And, oops, can't let those CEUs get away from you registered P.E.s…

Yet at no time in history have there been such tremendous capabilities for continuing education, networking and sharing of experience. Conferences, publications, webcasts, websites, eNewsletters and myriad of other opportunities for giving and getting information abound. In fact, there is too much information to access; not all of it is accurate or relevant. It's hard for engineers to know where to turn to for timely, credible, practical and useful information.

So, simply put, the mission of CSE is to become the first and foremost information and continuing education resource for engineers involved with building systems. We'll get there under my watch. Count on it.