For more than a decade I have proudly chaired the Philadelphia Section Chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Vehicular Technology Society (VTS), an industry organization that brings together professionals, vendors and thought leaders from around the region to engage in topics and trends related to electrical power, motive power for propulsion and auxiliary functions, land transportation and vehicle technology.
Earlier this year, our organization was recognized as the 2024 Philadelphia Section Chapter of the Year for our “exceptional leadership in developing effective chapter activities and encouraging their growth.” During the ceremony, I was joined by my STV colleagues including John Ponzio, senior vice president and director of our systems/security practice; Richard Ligmanowski, engineering specialist; and Jerry Jakubowski associate and engineering specialist. I was especially honored to share this achievement with my STV teammates since I feel like the steady growth and evolution of the Philadelphia IEEE VTS has come to reflect not only how our organization serves this field of practice, but how it serves the engineering community as a whole, including our clients and business partners.
The Philadelphia IEEE VTS serves multiple purposes that provide tremendous value to both senior leaders and early career professionals. It lets engineers conduct and attend technical meetings and earn professional credits towards their PE license renewals and provides a platform for folks to present projects to other firms and clients.
Local Philadelphia railway agencies, such as Amtrak and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, have historically attended our meetings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we moved our meetings to a virtual interface and have continued to host our meetings online, allowing us to expand our audience nationally, and bring in representatives from agencies like Sound Transit in Washington State, Bay Area Rapid Transit in California, the Long Island Rail Road in New York, Chicago Transit Authority and more.
In creating such a diverse guest list for each meeting, our goal is to educate other professionals in our industry and to connect with clients about the topics and trends that are most pertinent to them.
For example, with so much growth within the battery market as well as the increasing demand for innovative energy storage solutions, we recently had John Kim, director of industrial and utility markets at EnerSys, a stored energy systems and technology provider for industrial applications, present on electrical substation battery systems and how they provide uninterrupted backup power to protective relay systems, switchgear controls and switchyard equipment. We’ve also featured presentations about topics like traction power substation design best practices, grid edge solutions and battery energy storage systems, and electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure design, including EV grid-to-charger infrastructure.
These presentations provide information that is central to our current work at STV, so having the IEEE VTS serve as a bridge between us, our partners and our clients, inspires collaboration and innovation within our arena. From a continuing education perspective, all of these presentations allow participants to earn professional development hour (PDH) credits that can go towards maintaining/renewing PE licenses. To that end, we’ve also partnered with the Philadelphia Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers to alert members of the organization’s PDH “Boot Camps,” so they can earn as much as 24 credits towards their license.
Meanwhile, to better support our early career professionals, we cater our workshops and networking events to our engineering co-op students to help better provide them with a holistic professional experience at STV. Attending our meetings and presentations provides students and future STV leaders with a unique technical perspective about our field, as well as access to the clients and stakeholders we partner with.
Going forward, our goal is to continue to grow our chapter and appeal to that broader audience with more and more presentations and workshops. We encourage participants to submit feedback via our continuing education course evaluation online forms so we can improve our offerings and make strides to provide an even greater service to our industry.
