Executive Vice President’s message

Greg Lane, Executive Vice President

After 15 months of governor-imposed shutdowns and the constant changing of phases and safety protocols, it is tremendously relieving that our state is finally fully opening on June 30.

Throughout the pandemic, BIAW staff has stayed focused on supporting you, your business and your employees as effectively as possible. This has included forcefully advocating for the construction industry to keep working, despite the forced shutdown of so many other sectors of our economy, and continually communicating all of the information you have needed to comply with the ever-changing COVID-related rules and conditions.

The entire team here at BIAW is proud to have successfully advocated to restart construction activity a full month before any other industry—and that construction has remained open, strong and safe throughout the pandemic.

As I have emphasized before, this was a group effort that included the active work of all of the local associations and I want to thank everyone involved in supporting our members.

BIAW wins two NAHB Association Excellence Awards

NAHB recently recognized our organization’s work for our members and industry by awarding us two 2020 Association Excellence Awards.

Congratulations to BIAW Government Affairs Director Jan Himebaugh and General Counsel Jackson Maynard for winning the “Best Regional Government Affairs Effort” Award, underscoring their outstanding work getting the construction industry re-opened in Washington.

And congratulations to the BIAW Communications Team, including Communications Manager Bailee Wicks, ROII Marketing Manager Leah Jaber and Association Services Director Brenda Kwieciak, for winning the “Best Public Relations Program Conducted” Award.

Their exceptional work communicating with the news media to re-open construction and with BIAW members to get everyone back to work quickly and safely was instrumental to our success.

BIAW’s Membership Monopoly

While many state and local building associations around the country saw a dramatic decrease in membership during the pandemic, for BIAW, the 4% decline of statewide membership in 2020 was relatively small. However, it’s time to start building our ranks again.

For the first time in nearly 15 years, BIAW is launching a membership drive campaign with great incentives for recruiting new members.

Any BIAW member can qualify for prizes! All you need to do is recruit new builder and associate members to your local associations.

We demonstrated during COVID the strength of our association is derived from our membership. The larger our association grows, the stronger we are as an organization.