Engineering Inc. - March/April 2010 - 4

News&Notes ACEC Works With USAID on Haiti Relief And Reconstruction Assistance to volunteer services in the earthquake-ravaged nation. In response to an initial solicitation, more than 40 firms have signed up, and their names and capabilities were provided to USAID. Immediately following the earthquake, ACEC President Dave Raymond contacted USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah to offer the engineering industry’s assistance in addressing the island nation’s relief and recovery needs. “Many ACEC Member Firms have called our office in Washington, D.C., volunteering their services, and USAID has asked us to organize these offers and work closely with federal officials,” said Raymond. ACEC also maintains close touch with USAID on developments relating to the commissioning of technical resources for longer term infrastructure rebuilding efforts. ACEC’s International Committee has taken the lead on this initiative. For further information, contact Mark Steiner at msteiner@acec.org. CEC is assisting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in its Haiti relief and reconstruction effort by identifying Member Firms offering ACEC Honored In National Media Contest CEC’s Last Word earned a Gold Award as the nation’s best association newsletter in a competition by Association TRENDS magazine, marking the fifth time in six years ACEC has received the top national honor. ACEC also finished first in the “best manual” category with Choose Engineering as Your College Major. Its Health Insurance Coverage for Engineering and A/E/C Firms placed second in the “best manual” category, while its 2009 Business Practice Publications for Professionals won third in the “best catalog” category. DaviD SwanSon/newScom Engineers Better Than Doctors and Lawyers at Turning Income Into Wealth ngineers are more successful than doctors and lawyers at transforming income into wealth, according to a new survey by American wealth reseacher Thomas Stanley. The survey, conducted by the University of Georgia Survey Research Institute, was published in Stop Acting Rich…And Start Living Like a Real Millionaire. The book is the latest in a series by Stanley that explores the minds and behaviors of the wealthiest Americans. In it, Stanley attributes engineers’ wealth-building capacity to a thrifty nature. “Engineers in general are a frugal group,” writes Stanley. “They are less likely to favor expensive status-denoting products and brands than other groups. For many of them, substance, design and endurance are more important factors in selecting a product, even a home, than showy style and status connotations.” Interviews were conducted with more than 1,500 respondents, representing more than 5,000 households from neighborhoods with a high estimated incidence of millionaires, whom Stanley defines as having $1 million in investments, excluding their homes. Findings show that: • Mining and geological engineers ranked No. 1 in percentage of millionaires among the top 200 high-income-producing occupational categories in America. • Overall, engineers produced about 22 percent more wealth per dollar of realized income than did millionaires in general. • Engineers who are millionaires tend to live in neighborhoods where the median price of a home is, on average, 12 percent lower than for millionaires in general. • Wealthy engineers often keep their cars longer (five years, seven months) than millionaires in general (four years, four months). Engineers also pay, on average, 11 percent less for their vehicles than do typical millionaires, the survey found. According to Internal Revenue Service data, about one in 13 (7.6 percent) of all deceased males in 2004 with a gross estate of $1 million or more once was an engineer. Yet engineers account for just 2.3 percent of the male working population in this country. ENGINEERING INC. MaRCh / apRIl 2010

Engineering Inc. - March/April 2010

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