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🌆 ACE Club Digest - New Year New ACE

First Meetup of 2025, Sawyer’s AEC reading list, and 3 charts contractors should watch this year

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Sawyer Middeleer & Emma Klein
January 10, 2025

Our first meetup of 2025 is on January 22 at 5:30pm. Tell your colleagues and your friends. We can’t wait to see you there!

Sign up for ACE Club’s next meetup using the RSVP button below (this will help you get reminders as the event gets closer).

Enjoying ACE? Please forward this email to an AEC colleague or friend!

Sawyer’s AEC Reading List

I read a ton, especially during the final weeks of December when work slows down and I have extra time while visiting my parent’s house. This year I picked up quite a few amazing AEC-related books.

Here are 3 that I can’t recommend highly enough for your reading lists this year.

Out of all the construction business books I’ve read, this on is my favorite. There’s a great blend of business strategy and leadership lessons for folks in construction, whether you’re a PM, estimator or specialty tradesperson.

How Infrastructure Works is a love letter to all of the vital-yet often invisible- civil infrastructural projects that run our lives. I guarantee you’ll come away from this book with a much greater appreciation for these systems and the people who built and maintain them.

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction - Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein

This book is a classic and is to my knowledge one of the only works out there that successfully unites the worlds of urban design, architecture and construction. Over the years, I’ve spent hours flipping through sections illustrating courtyard layout, use of natural sunlight, doorway construction and more.

Have you worked on a project that you’d like us to feature? Tell us about it!

👨‍🏫 Upcoming AEC Courses

  • (1/30) - Mastering the Tool Chest in Bluebeam - learn how the Tool Chest in Bluebeam can help you streamline your design workflow, increase collaboration efficiency, and boost your project speed.

đź“° Our favorite reads, listens & watches

  • 3 Charts Contractors should Watch this Year - From interest rate cuts to a new presidential administration, construction pros are keeping close tabs on key issues and trends that could drive costs up or unlock new opportunities.

  • Congestion Pricing Begins in New York - The plan to toll drivers entering Manhattan’s central business district went into effect Sunday. Revenues will go to the transit authority’s capital investments.

  • Building High-Performing Buildings with Straw Panels - Given how abundant and cheap straw is, the thicker the walls and the higher the volume of insulation, the more cost-effective straw panels become. This flips the story of the big, bad wolf on it’s head completely!

  • Capital Projects 5.0: Reimagining capital-project delivery - A few years old, but still interesting. The authors studied how leading companies improve delivery of complex projects and identified six design principles that could act as building blocks for a better approach.

If you’re new here, subscribe to ACE to get updates about meet-up and events.

Until next time,

Emma & Sawyer

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