BASE Member Information

Purpose

The purpose of the Association is to provide a forum for its members to exchange ideas on professional and business practice. The goals of this Association are to protect the safety and other interests of the public, maintain high professional standards, safeguard and improve the practice of structural engineering, improve business relationships with clients and, when needed, provide criteria and support for legislation or governmental regulations pertaining to the practice of structural engineering.

Membership

The membership is composed of Firm Members, Individual Members and Affiliate Members. All firm representatives are automatically members of SEAMass.

Firm members may be corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietors. Firm Members shall be engineering firms, whose principal business is structural engineering for buildings and related structures. Firm Members shall have offices in Massachusetts or one of the New England states. Each Firm Member shall designate, as it's sole Representative, a structural engineer who is a Registered Professional Engineer and is actively engaged in the execution of the structural engineering work and management of the business. This Representative shall be the Firm's contact member with the Association and shall have the authority to vote for the Firm at the meetings and elections. The Firm may change it's Representative at any time, by notifying the President of the Association. Each Firm Member shall be allowed to cast only one vote.

Individual Members shall be individuals fulfilling one of the following requirements:
1. A former Representative of a Firm Member who is retired from the practice of structural engineering.
2. Any person who was in standing as a member of the Association on March 18, 1992.
Individual Members shall have the authority to vote at all of the Association’s meetings and elections.

Affiliate Members shall be individuals not meeting the requirements of Individual Members. They shall have the same rights and privileges as Firm Members and Individual Members except, election as an officer of the Association and voting authority at the meetings and elections of the Association. Affiliate Members shall be limited to the following individuals:
1. A registered professional structural engineer having the qualifications of a Representative of a Firm.
2. Individuals whose business and professional activity, in the judgment of the executive committee and the membership at large, is closely related to and in sympathy with the purpose of BASE.

Dues

Annual dues shall be a sum recommended by the Officers elected and approved by a majority vote at a meeting. Annual dues are currently $280.

Meetings

BASE meets on the 3rd Wednesday of September, November, January, March and May at the MIT Faculty Club in Cambridge Massachusetts. Current meeting dates can be found on the SEAMass structural engineering calendar.

Committees

Efforts continue to meet the goals of the Organization. Several committees working towards those goals include:

Peer Review Committee to provide guidance to compliance with the Massachusetts State Building Code requirements.
Website Committee to continue to provide a forum to the public and the Organization on issues concerning Structural Engineers and Structural Engineering.
Structural Engineering Emergency Response Plan organization committee for the State of Massachusetts
Legislative Affairs Committee with the Boston Society of Architects

History

BASE began in 1958 to set out on behalf of structural engineering firms within a 25 mile radius of State House in Boston to work with what is today known as the Division of Capital Asset Management DCAM. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, BASE became of member organization of The National Council Structural Engineers. Some of the members of BASE have served as President of NCSEA in the early days of its creation. BASE then created SEAMass in 2006 to be the member organization of NCSEA to allow all structural engineers in Massachusetts access to improve the practice of structural engineering and to foster communication among structural engineers to improve the practice of structural engineering.

Today, BASE is made up of 57 member firms around the State of Massachusetts and other New England states. It continues to serve its members who are mostly business owners. It also continues to provide service to the public in the form of education towards the public and its members to provide safe, long-lasting, and economical structures in the built environment.