By Michael Adelizzi, ASA Executive Vice President
Delivering America’s critical resources of water, natural gas and oil is an important role of the PHCP and PVF industry. When our delivery is flawless, no one notices. Any interruption of delivery, however, often becomes headline news.
Our industry knows all too well that our nation’s infrastructure has been in a steady decline for decades. We also know that this threatens to interrupt the flow of our vital resources. Municipal, state and national leaders have long ignored the badly needed revitalization of the infrastructure that delivers water and gas to American homes and businesses. Oil companies are deterred from expanding badly needed refinery capacity through endless regulatory red tape. This is not to mention the opposition from environmentalists who have an unchecked influence in Washington. Furthermore, we scratch our heads in confusion as short-term solutions to the need for America’s energy independence through the passage of pipelines are vetoed at a time when foreign sources of oil are threatened by escalating uncertainty overseas.
ASA members and our government affairs staff are already working with other allied groups to push for increased investment in our nation’s infrastructure from Washington, D.C. We are helping to create solutions by expanding energy needs. A large part of this is better management of our fossil fuels here at home; including making sure they are delivered where they are needed. While we are all concerned over sensible environmental issues, we cannot let that be a deterrent to ensuring America’s independence over secure foreign sources. This includes our Canadian friends to the north. Establishing working relationships with allied customer groups beyond just our Washington efforts will strengthen our industry’s ability to be a part of the solution. New innovative publications such asPVF Outlookand soon-to-be-introducedPlumbing Business Outlook(PB Outlook) will be some of our industry’s most vital links toward building those important partnerships.
PVF Outlook, which is a project of the American Supply Association’s Industrial Piping Division (IPD), issued its inaugural magazine to roughly 20,000 PVF industry customers such as mechanical contractors, oil and chemical firms as well as large industrial customers this past July. The second issue ofPVF Outlookwill be published in mid-November.PB Outlookwill be a project of the American Supply Association’s Plumbing Division. This publication will specifically target plumbing contractors, homebuilders, developers and engineers. The inaugural issue ofPB Outlookwill be published in early 2013. These two highly professional publications will be an integral part ofASA’s Business Success Goalofincreasing the number of customers recognizing that ASA members enable them to prosper. They will enable our association to connect and cultivate working relationships with customer groups. Over the next few years, our members will be able to leverage the success of the Outlook publications and the trust that industry customers will gain from the informational content in each issue. We are excited about the possibilities that these new publications will provide to the ASA membership.
We also are proud of the century of dependable service that assures our nation when a faucet is turned on or a gas pump is used, product flows without notice of how it got there. Our members stand ready to partner with our customers and their representatives as we work toward providing more valuable solutions. Our goal is that over the next 100 years, Americans will have the same level of dependability to which they have become accustomed. The American Supply Association is ready to lead the way.
For more information, please contact the American Supply Association at 630/ 467-0000 or visitwww.asa.net.
