二十年前,美国建立理事会ng Companies’ annual convention looked more like an old-style wedding than an event from the hard-edged trade association and smoothly running lobbying machine the ACEC is today. Back in the day, the convention consisted of the organization’s volunteer leadership dressed in tuxedos on stage with their wives—who also held organizational positions—“while the rest of the members sat in the audience; it was the strangest thing,” recalls David A. Raymond, who retired in July as ACEC’s president and chief executive after 20 years of service. Despite holding demanding senior positions at engineering firms, the volunteer leaders controlled all aspects of ACEC. For example, the treasurer “dictated to the staffers how the books should be kept,” Raymond says. “We cleared all that out. We just bulldozed all these vestiges of some earlier day that was no longer the way a modern business association should function.”

Raymond set out to turn what he calls the de facto “social club” into a “hard-hitting fighting group on the legislative front.” He started by elevating existing staffers from “note takers and arrangers of tea and coffee” to leadership roles. He compensated them accordingly, too.

Raymond’s efforts ultimately resulted in ACEC becoming “a known force in Washington,” says Terry F. Neimeyer, former ACEC chairman and current chairman of KCI Technologies Inc. In addition to making ACEC a more “business-friendly organization,” Neimeyer says Raymond “found ways to educate our members on all of the good things that ACEC does to add value to our firms.”

Raymond says the association doubled its budget under his watch.

Today, it ranks in the top 3% of all federal political action committees with more than $1 million in annual contributions. ACEC member firms account for 87% of the 2018 ENR Top 500 Design Firms, up from 70% a decade earlier. In addition, 90% of the ENR Top 100 belong to ACEC. Today, the council has more than 5,600 member firms in 52 state and regional chapters. Those firms represent more than 600,000 industry professionals, up from approximately 100,000 several years earlier.

雷蒙德ACEC注入了生命的事件。信息技术ndance at its annual convention rose 35%, to more than 1,500, over the last six years. In 2006, then-President George W. Bush headlined the convention. Other past speakers include writers Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough and former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency leader Michael Hayden. Once a sleepy 150-person luncheon, ACEC’s annual Engineering Excellence Awards now draws more than 750 attendees annually. Actor-comedian Kevin Nealon hosted the event the last two years.

The 70-year-old Raymond “has truly left a legacy of achievement and accomplishment,” Mary Ann Emely, senior adviser at ACEC, said while introducing Raymond as ENR MidAtlantic’s 2018 Legacy Award winner on Nov. 7 in Baltimore.

Taking the Hill

在游说立法和监管问题时，雷蒙德（Raymond）是文斯·伦巴第理论（Vince Lombardi）理论的坚定订阅者，即“胜利不是一切，这是唯一的事情。”他说，如果没有在国会山的成功记录，ACEC就会解散。他说：“成为ACEC成员的目的是为获胜的倡导组织做出贡献并受益。”

In 2004, while lobbying for the American Jobs Creation Act, ACEC convinced Congress to include engineering firms among those that could take a 9% deduction for domestic manufacturing companies working abroad. “Dave is a strategic thinker and was a great advocate for his members,” says Steve Sandherr, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of America.

2006年，雷蒙德（Raymond）是一个由100个商业组织组成的联盟的一部分，游说废除一项法律要求工程公司和承包商（其他联邦政府客户）将其支付的3％扣押。五年后，扣留了预扣，为ACEC会员公司挽救了“美国政府将扣留的数百万现金流量”，Neimeyer说。

最近，雷蒙德（Raymond）和ACEC游说2017年减税和就业法案。理事会说服立法者包括一项规定，该规定允许组织作为传递实体的工程公司获得20％的税收减免。该规定不是立法早期版本的一部分，使S公司，合伙企业和LLCS受益。雷蒙德指出其他团体，例如会计师，律师和演艺人员，没有得到20％的扣除，雷蒙德说：“这对我们来说确实是一个胜利。”

While ACEC often works with other like-minded organizations to lobby for, or against, legislation, Raymond says ACEC had to lead on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act because “other industries are not tied to the qualifications-based selection (QBS) doctrine that ACEC has promoted over the years.”

为了捍卫联邦紧急事务管理局和美国森林服务局等公司的QBS挑战，ACEC表示，多年来，它已停止了州运输部门的竞标项目。18luck官网ACEC在雷蒙德（Raymond）领导下的最大胜利之一是在2005年，该组织帮助确保立法限制了国家点对公司开销的限制。该立法还包括针对联邦资助的运输项目的统一采购规则。18luck官网另外，ACEC通过拒绝努力使州政府更难将工程服务外包来实现各州的胜利。

All this work at the state level played into Raymond’s concerted effort to improve relations between the national ACEC office and its state chapters. Raymond beefed up ACEC’s dollar-for-dollar matching program between the national organization and the member chapters by helping to generate more total dollars raised from member firms.

That helped secure legislative, regulatory and judiciary wins at the state level, Raymond says. Additionally, Raymond led an effort to uniformly rename and rebrand the member organizations to incorporate “ACEC” into their chapter titles. For example, the Texas Civil Engineering Consultants became ACEC/Texas. “When you go out on the field and you’ve all got the same uniform instead of wearing different uniforms, that does a lot for cohesion in an organization,” Raymond says.

Raymond credits his staff for these successes. He says he championed their efforts by participating in their work without micromanaging. “I wanted our advocacy staff to manage itself and run itself, but I also wanted to participate with them to provide whatever insight, support and so forth I could,” he says. “Because I couldn’t let them fail. Nobody was allowed to fail.”

Arrival

雷蒙德（Raymond）于1948年出生于德国法兰克福，在战后欧洲度过了他生命的前十年，而他的父亲是第二次世界大战的老将，是《纽约时报》的外国通讯员。当他的父亲被分配到《泰晤士报》华盛顿局时，他搬到了华盛顿特区。

从普林斯顿大学毕业并获得塔夫茨大学弗莱彻法学与外交学院的硕士学位后，雷蒙德在乔治敦获得了法律学位，晚上在工作期间，在晚上上班。雷蒙德（Raymond）在职业生涯的早期曾担任美国国际发展机构管理局的助理，并且是密苏里州民主党前美国参议员斯图尔特·西明顿（Stuart Symington）的辩护和外交政策顾问。Raymond also worked as an assistant dean at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service before becoming a senior executive at firms such as Raytheon Engineers & Constructors Inc. and EBASCO Services International Inc., an international arm of the engineering and construction giant EBASCO Services Inc. “It was quite an impressive background that he brought to ACEC,” Emely said at the awards luncheon.

Though Raymond’s construction and congressional background seemed to suit him for his role at ACEC, he didn’t feel that the organization reached “a point of arrival” until he got a call from Karl Rove early in President George W. Bush’s first term. Rove, then a senior adviser to the president, was impressed by ACEC’s success on Capitol Hill. He attended a meeting at ACEC’s office along with heads of other leading trade associations, Raymond says. The meeting eventually led to Bush’s address to ACEC’s annual convention in 2006.

ACEC’s events have also become much more “hard-core business” focused, Raymond says, and they also provide members the opportunity to receive credits toward their engineering licenses. Other education initiatives include in-person and online seminars, as well as popular executive education programs focused on financial topics. ACEC says several of its specialized coalitions and forums are attended by 10,000 members annually from 1,250 member firms.

未完成的工作

制定了重大的基础设施立法是雷蒙德未完成的ACEC业务中最大的一部分。他说：“我们在那个领域落后，我们需要严重赶上。”“即使我们获得适度的[资金]定期增加，我们也不应该对此感到满意，因为需求要大得多。”

But Raymond says he is finished wading into legislative battles. He is preparing to move from the Washington, D.C., area to Florida with his wife later this year, and says he has no interest in consulting or joining industry boards. A bookworm, Raymond says he reads three times as much as he did while he was working, including three books in one recent week-and-a-half stint. He also might try his hand at teaching a course in history or business. “I loved everything that I was doing,” he says of his time at ACEC. “I’m just moving on to a new phase—as I’ve done before—in my life.”