www.ucls.org 8 Western Federation of Professional Surveyors By Michael Nadeau, WFPS Director, PLS/CFedS Hello members! As I started to write this report, I decided to check out the last time I wrote a report for you. The summer of 2019 was the last Foresights the UCLS produced, and that was also my last report to you, pre-COVID-19. What an absolutely crazy couple of years it has been, my friends. I hope you all have been well and safe during the last few years. I’m excited that the UCLS Foresights is back, and I’m doubly excited we are on the back end of the pandemic. Ironically, my entire two-year chairmanship with WFPS happened to be during COVID. So, every single meeting – except my first meeting as Chairman in March 2020 in Washington State – was a virtual meeting. As a side note, as I was getting on the plane at SeaTac leaving this first meeting as chairman, the national news in the airport was reporting the first COVID-19 death in the U.S. just happened to be in SEATTLE, where I was! Over the last few years since my last report in Foresights, WFPS has been hard at work raising the bar for our profession. Here are some of the highlights of what we’ve been working on: 1. In the past, WFPS directors met three times a year in one of the member states. Over the last few years and all through my chairmanship, the WFPS Executive Committee (Excom) has been meeting monthly to ensure ongoing activities discussed during the three yearly board meetings are still attended throughout the year between each board meeting. This has proven to be a great extra set of meetings in that work inside WFPS doesn’t get dropped between the three annual board meetings. These Excom meetings are held virtually to keep director costs as low as possible for our member states. 2.Most recently, WFPS was very involved in preparing, planning and executing theWestern Regional Survey Conference in Las Vegas. This conference was from March 30 to April 2, 2022, and was very well attended. We had over 950 attendees from 31 states across the country. This conference included 22 hours of continuing education spread across four simultaneous tracks. It’s possible I’m being a bit myopic here since I’m also the Chair of the Conference Committee for WFPS, but I would dare say this was one of the best conferences I’ve attended in my 27 years of surveying. Thanks to all the Utah attendees and all four states who helped make this conference such a success, including the UCLS, NALS, CLSA and APLS. Yours truly received theWFPS chairman plaque during the awards ceremony. 3.WFPS is excited to announce the release of the FS Exam Study Course, which includes approximately 16 hours of videos and a manual. Topics included are based on the current NCEES Fundaments of Surveying (FS) exam specifications and recommended knowledge. https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/ FS-CBT-specs.pdf. Presenters: Dane Courville, PLS, and Knud Hermansen, PLS, PE, Ph.D. WFPS understands the concern of not having enough surveyors in the profession to handle the current and future workloads.
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