As I begin my year as president of the New Hampshire Good Roads Association, I recognize a more profound awareness about the vital role this organization plays in simply bringing people together. Whether we’re having fun — like at our recent Paintball Battle 2022 event — or working together to address critical issues — like our Workforce Development Committee, there is no other forum quite like Good Roads. There’s nothing like us, to my knowledge, anywhere.
As busy as we all are this time of year, I hope you will plan to join us for the Equipment Showcase Open on July 28 & 29 at Beaver Meadow Golf Course and Canterbury Woods Country Club. Like last year, we’ll be hosting VIP Night at Beaver Meadow the evening before the tournament. The Equipment Showcase will be a feature at both golf courses. You can easily register for golf, exhibit space, and sponsorships online at the NHGRA website.
Speaking of the website, we’ve recently launched a new one! Check it out sometime. We’ve added some new features that will help us communicate more effectively with our current members and present ourselves more clearly to prospective members.
Why join us? Who should join us? We’ll be focusing on developing some answers to these questions over the coming months. As part of that process, we plan to revise our Mission Statement and membership communication plan. We may also survey current membership and invite your direct input. Stay tuned.
In other news, the Scholarship Committee met in the spring and awarded five deserving students with the Roger F. Provost and NHGRA Construction Scholarships. Your help in building our scholarship resources is greatly appreciated.
With our advertisers’ support, New Hampshire Highways magazine is continuing to develop great content, available and distributed in both printed and digital form. In the summer issue, we are re-introducing Product Showcase, where our members feature their newest, latest, and most exciting products and services. We are also introducing a new Workforce Development “department” where we’ll be reporting on the work of the Workforce Development Committee each quarter.
The committee is already making significant progress in assembling people and resources to address the construction workforce crisis.
Looking ahead, you won’t want to miss the Fall Social on November 5 at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel. Please plan to join us for an exciting evening of great food, good friends, fun surprises, and lots of dancing. Check out our website — www.nhgoodroads.org — for details.
In closing, I encourage all our members to think about what they value most about Good Roads and consider bringing a colleague or business associate — someone unfamiliar with Good Roads — to one of our events in the coming year. An essential part of what makes this organization so special is the personal interactions that our events make possible. This is how we build community — which is something our world needs a lot more of these days.
Chris Mulleavey