ACEC of Tennessee advocates, promotes, and protects the professional well being of ALL of Tennessee’s engineering companies. It is incumbent upon our organization and our members to represent all of the engineering community in the state and local governments to assure a viable future for our profession. ACEC of Tennessee advocates at the state level for the interests of engineering firms before the Tennessee General Assembly, the State Board of Architects and Engineers, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the State Fire Marshal, and the Tennessee Department of Conservation and Environment. ACEC of Tennessee is vigilant for the cause of Qualification Based Selection (QBS) in the market place to protect the professional status of engineering companies against price-based selection. Our member firms range in size from one person to 400 and more than half have fewer than 25 employees.
2015 Engineers’ Day on the Hill Issue Briefs
Local Building Codes
Building Codes – Seismic
Public Works Projects
Transportation Coalition
Qualifications-Based Selection
Additional Engineering issues
Some of our recent accomplishments include:
• Advocating for legislation limiting engineers’ liability for state highway projects and supporting Governor Haslam’s tort reform legislation;
• Successfully lobbying against legislation requiring designers of state projects to estimate the annual BTU consumption during design development and encouraging contractors to consider alternative designs to reduce energy consumption;
• Lobbying successfully against legislation to restrict the ability of state agencies to contract with the private sector for services;
• Presenting legitimate opposition to legislation to allow engineering technology graduates to sit for the PE exam;
•Supporting legislation to enable the State Fire Marshal to create a dispute resolution process to speed up action on differences between the State Fire Marshal and MEP designers and promoting public safety by
opposing legislation that would have eliminated the need for an engineer to design fire protection systems;
• Helping convince legislators to vote against efforts to allow plaintiffs to discover insurance liability limits;
• Successfully opposing legislation to increase the threshold for public works projects that must be designed by an architect or engineer from $25k to $150k, limiting the bill to state parks and including safeguards for public safety;
• Educating local governments about the implications of purchasing requirements for consulting services; and
• Successfully lobbying against legislation that would remove the requirement that an engineer or architect prepare plans for renovation of an existing building of any size or occupancy.
