Webinars

Transition from NABIE to ABID

Greg Lason, ABID President

Edited from the recording’s automatic captions for readability. The remarks and plans reflect the time of recording. For current conference information, visit the conference page.

0:01 — Welcome and the transition

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm Greg Lason, current president of the Association of Building Inspection and Design Professionals. Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most significant changes in our organization's history, the transition from NABIE to ABID. This isn't simply a name change. It isn't a decision that was taken lightly. It's an evolution of who we are, who we serve, and where we are headed as an organization.

Over the next few minutes, I want to discuss why we transitioned from NABIE to ABID, what the change means for our members, our growing corporate partnerships, our upcoming conference in February, new opportunities for member involvement, and how you can help shape the future of ABID. The success of ABID was not determined by our board alone. It'll be determined by participation, expertise, and leadership of our current and future members. The future of ABID belongs to all of us.

1:04 — Building on NABIE’s history

For decades, NABIE has served as an important professional home for building inspection engineers who are licensed professionals. The organization was built on professional relationships, technical knowledge sharing, continuing education opportunities, and a respected reputation within our industry. Many of us owe friendships, professional growth, and career opportunities directly to NABIE. I know I do. The history of NABIE is something we should all be proud of. However, as professional service offerings evolved within our member firms, we recognized that our organization needed to evolve as well. Our membership had already evolved beyond just professional engineers.

There were also members of the National Society of Professional Engineers or NSPE. By welcoming architects and corporate affiliate members, the board formally approved our new DBA and branding as ABID, however you want to say it, to broaden the focus of the organization while preserving the existing legal entity and legacy.

2:10 — Why the name changed

So, why did we make this change? The board spent months discussing the service offerings of our current membership and determined that a large majority of our existing members do much more than traditional building inspections. The board felt the change in the name would allow attraction of engineers and other design professionals that perform similar services as our existing membership. The name Association of Building Inspection and Design Professionals better reflects the breadth of the work performed by current membership. The transition was intended to broaden the organization's focus while maintaining its technical roots.

The name ABID allows us to welcome other engineers, architects, building consultants, other construction professionals, even students, and other corporate partners that may or may not have become involved because they practice outside of building inspection. The intention of the name change is to build on NABIE, not replace NABIE. That's very important. We are simply aligning the name with the current practice of our members. The name change also does not change our affinity status with NSPE. Our professional members are also members of NSPE.

3:31 — A broader industry focus

So, we're going to expand our industry focus and we do this because a lot of our members are involved in building enclosure inspection and consulting, structural assessments, forensic investigations, building design, construction administration, reserve studies, energy and sustainability work, building science, just to name a few. This is definitely not an exhaustive list. ABID exists to support engineers, architects, design and construction professionals that evaluate buildings, design building repairs, and implement building repairs.

4:11 — The values that stay the same

So, what stays the same? Some things are changing, many things are not. Our commitment remains to technical excellence, ethical practice, peer-to-peer collaboration, continuing education, professional integrity, and to public safety. ABID continues to promote excellence, integrity, safety, and professional standards through education and collaboration. The values that built NABIE are the values that will guide ABID.

4:45 — New initiatives

So, what's new under ABID? We are introducing several initiatives designed for long-term sustainability. One of those is modern technology. We've upgraded our website, and we've integrated with a new CRM software, so we can more readily send communications to our members. We've automated our membership management platform to make membership renewals easier and provide revenue streams to the organization. We've also improved our communication system, which hopefully you'll see in the coming months and weeks. You’ll see many more emails and social media blasts and whatnot. We're trying to have more consistent programming, regular webinars.

We would like to do monthly, or even more than that if our things come online. Expanded educational content and more opportunities for our members. We're having a broader reach through corporate partnerships, engaging more with students, and then cross-disciplinary collaboration. We're talking with different architects and designers and construction professionals and suppliers that all are within the industry that we're already operating in.

6:08 — Corporate partnerships

With that, we are really trying to strengthen our corporate partnerships. So, one of the most exciting developments is the growth of our corporate partnerships. We've been working the last several months in trying to establish a few of these. So, historically, our sponsors have primarily supported our conference. Today's corporate partners want more meaningful engagement throughout the year to our membership. So, we're creating that year-round opportunity for industry partners. We're doing that through education, through technical demonstrations, professional development, and other networking events. We're also excited to announce our partnership with ArcSite.

All ABID members that wish to use the ArcSite platform will receive a discounted subscription rate, which also helps ABID as ArcSite provides revenue sharing back to the organization based on our membership engagement. So, you can go to our website to get more information regarding this program, and then through there, you can sign up with ArcSite on your own. We’re also in the stages of developing an affiliate program with Tremco. They have signed on to become an affiliate member, and are going to be involved in our upcoming conference in Scottsdale and our webinars.

So, be on the lookout for more information as that develops. But, these partnerships help us to deliver better educational content, expand conference offerings, support some student initiatives, which we really want to start to be able to do, and strengthen our overall financial stability, which will improve the long-term capabilities of the organization. So, when corporate partners succeed along with our members, everybody benefits.

8:03 — The 2027 conference in Scottsdale

So, I mentioned our conference in 2027, which is going to be held in Scottsdale. I know originally we were talking about going to Dublin, and that just is not going to pan out for this upcoming year. We may revisit that for upcoming conferences, potentially in '28 or 2029. But for this conference in 2027, we are going to be going to Scottsdale, McCormick Ranch. And our conference activities are planned for February the 18th through February 21st, which is a Thursday through Sunday. We're going to do things a little different.

We're going to kick off our conference on Thursday, with our first-ever golf outing. And the purpose of the golf outing is one to have fun, but two, also to be able to raise some funds for the organization, specifically through our Sigman Fund. And you can visit our website to learn more about the Sigman Fund if this is the first time you've been hearing about it. We're also going to have an opening reception after the golf outing.

And during the opening reception, we're going to have our exhibit hall open to all of our exhibitors that will be with us throughout the conference time. Our conference programming itself will begin on Friday and run through Sunday, and that'll have our typical format of all day Friday, all day Saturday, half day Sunday. Through there, we'll be doing technical presentations, have our professional development, earn our PDHs for our licensure. We're going to have some networking availability through the exhibit hall, exhibitor engagement. And we're also going to be having some leadership discussions during that conference. So, I would urge everyone to attend.

9:58 — Conference topics and member expertise

Some of the highlights that we’ll be looking at: we’re going to be talking about some building science stuff, specifically LiDAR scanning. Air and water barriers. We're going to be doing a field trip to Simpson Strong-Tie to the training facility and see the manufacturing that's at the training facility. We're going to be talking about blower door testing and how to incorporate that into our workflows. We're talking about succession planning and how do we develop our transition when we're getting ready to either sell our business or retire. And then we're going to have some case studies.

So, with that, if you have a case study you would like to present to us, feel free to contact us. We do have one or two slots still available in the schedule that we can move some things around and provide some more case studies. We would like to hear from members as much as we can. We are probably our best venue for education because we are the ones in the field doing it each day. So, we're going to have an additional emphasis really placed on practical content, applied technologies, like I said before, some case studies.

And we'll also hear from vendors and manufacturers through the exhibitor piece and be able to apply what they're seeing in the field to our presentations.

11:33 — A conference for the next chapter

Part of the reason we are not going to Dublin and we're going to Scottsdale is one, it's our transition year and we really wanted a venue where it's easy to get to for our membership because we're really looking for this event to introduce ABID to industry to kind of relaunch it. We want to recruit new members, build sponsor relationships. We found it was easier to do that having a US-based conference than an overseas conference. Really trying to create momentum in doing that by showcasing our member expertise through the case studies and other presentations that we're going to be doing.

So, really the whole goal of this conference is for each of the attendees to become ambassadors for the organization moving forward.

12:32 — Member leadership

And after the conference we really want to see more members become involved in the organization. So, we get asked occasionally, how can I get involved? And the answer's simple, just serve. Whether that's on the board or on a future committee that we create, we're looking to have passionate leaders that are willing to contribute their time and expertise. Board service opportunities include shaping strategy, influencing programming, and growing professional networks. I know I do a lot more work with board members now than before I was on the board. I give back to the profession.

Leadership succession—the future of the organization depends on member involvement. The strongest professional organizations are member-led organizations and we are definitely member-led. Everything that happens is due to the members, and we need more members to participate so that we can provide better services to the members.

13:37 — Future committees

One of the things we're wanting to do for those that don't really want to get on the board is as we grow, we really want to develop more committees that will help in the planning of our future events. So, with that said, committees could include a conference committee, where you would develop speakers, logistics, events, sponsorships. A membership committee for recruiting and retention, student outreach. A marketing and communication committee for website content, newsletters, and social media. And a sponsorship committee to develop more corporate affiliate relationships and strategic partnerships. I have to say none of these exist at the moment.

These are all things we want to provide as we get enough members to develop those committees. So, if you want to get into leadership of the organization, that’s going to be the best route. We’ll start working in these committees to help grow the organization as a whole.

14:50 — Webinars throughout the year

Which brings me to webinars. Webinars are another vehicle that we want to use to provide benefit to members. They're going to serve as our main connection point as an organization outside of our yearly conference. Our goal is to build recurring webinars featuring technical presentations, forensic case studies, business development topics, risk management strategies, and technical demonstration. We would like to have various tracks that we can house on our YouTube channel that we can download and look at on a regular basis, by having those monthly or semi-monthly depending on the track.

So, if you have more knowledge to share, we definitely want to hear from you. Because webinars are going to be a lot of our communication moving forward.

15:49 — Social media and member contributions

As well as social media. So, with the rebrand, we are trying to become heavily involved in communication. We've begun using various social media platforms to provide content as well as making announcements. So if you’re a social media user, I highly encourage each of you to follow the pages, share content. We're currently using LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. And after this webinar is finished, this presentation will be emailed out to our members and you'll see the links within the presentation that you can go directly to our platforms.

So, the whole point of our social media presence is that we need members to submit technical articles, record videos that we can share, share project lessons learned, promote webinars, highlight case studies. If you’re putting something on social media, share it with the organization so we can reshare it or repost it. Because the more content we create, the stronger our visibility becomes.

17:19 — Growth and long-term sustainability

And our long-term sustainability depends on growth. We need to grow. We need more members. So, we need to get the word out of who we are, why we're here, what we do. Our growth is not meant for numbers alone. The more members we have, the more expertise we have, the more resources become available, the more influence we're able to have. More opportunities for members that we can create. So, the transition from NABIE to ABID, it represents kind of a rare opportunity to reset. We want to honor the past by building something much larger and more sustainable for the future.

17:58 — How to get involved

So, I encourage every member to choose one way to get involved or multiple ways to get involved by attending the conference in Scottsdale, bringing a colleague to it, joining a committee, presenting in a webinar, writing articles, engaging with social media, seeking a board position or other leadership role, recruiting new members. That's going to be the biggest one. I would encourage everyone to do that regardless of other participation. Introducing corporate partners to the organization.

If you have a corporate partner that you deal with a lot in your day-to-day, make the connection to leadership and we'll get in touch with them about ways that we can further that relationship. So, we're going to become exactly what members make it. The foundation's been built. The conference is coming in February. I encourage everyone to come participate. Partnerships are growing. Momentum is real. Now is the time for all of us to help shape the next chapter. Thank you, and I look forward to building the future together.