AUSTIN, Texas. July 28, 2020 (Biz Republic) — The Texas Association of Builders (TAB) was recently honored with four national awards. TAB won two Association Excellence Awards from the Executive Officers Council (EOC) of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and two publication honors from Awards for Publication Excellence (APEX).
NAHB awarded TAB as Best Regional Government Affairs Effort for passing HB 2439: “Prohibiting Product Mandates in Residential Construction”. A recent trend among too many cities in Texas was the practice of amending building code regulations and standards to indirectly or directly prohibit or limit competing products that meet nationally approved construction codes and standards. If not prohibited through HB 2439, such activities would restrict property rights, create monopolies and increase the cost of construction. HB 2439 prohibits those mandates that would have increased the cost of a home by tens of thousands of dollars, thus preventing thousands of Texans from being priced out of the American Dream of homeownership.
The 2019 Sunbelt Builders Show™ App also received NAHB merits for the “Best Web 2.0 Program” for a state association. The app provided attendees real time opportunities to track daily schedules, read education and demo descriptions and research exhibitors before and while on the trade show floor. It also kept attendees updated with social events and keynote speakers. The app served as a live hub of Sunbelt information for the following year.
These two winning AEA submissions will be added to a directory so that other HBA executives and home builders’ associations across the country can access and learn from them to provide better service to their members and communities. For these achievements, TAB has received recognition on the NAHB website, the NAHBNow blog, and entries have been posted to the NAHB website where HBAs can research for best practices.
The Association Excellence Awards is an annual program designed to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of state and local home builders’ associations and executive officers in the field of association management. EOC membership is comprised of the staff executives who direct more than 650 NAHB-affiliated state and local home builders’ associations representing more than 140,000 home builders in communities across the United States.
TAB also teamed up with its Texas Builder Magazine partner, E&M Consulting, Inc., to capture two 2020 APEX Awards. E&M’s Krystie Dovenmuehler was the winning author for both featured articles that won APEX praises.
Dovenmuehler captured an elite Writing Overall Grand Award for her feature on “Changing the Face of Construction: Heather Ferrier Laminack Advocates for Women in Construction” article that appeared in the Texas Builder January/February 2020 edition. Laminack became the first female president of her local Greater Fort Worth Builders Association this year and used this opportunity as a platform to show that women in business deserve more recognition in leadership roles. Her mission is to encourage women and younger generations to be open minded toward the profession. She was a founding member of TAB’s Young Professional Council and wants to create a Professional Women In Building Council at the state level.
Dovenmuehler’s “Timeless Texas: Texas Hill Country Reclaimed Retreat” article gained Award of Excellence for Writing – Feature Writing honors. This piece was printed in the July/August 2019 Texas Builder Magazine. The article walked you through how the builder had to dismantle a 19th century barn piece-by-painstaking-piece in Upstate New York and reassembled it in the Texas Hill Country near Houston. The aesthetic of the home, “reclaimed hill country,” is a complete expression of the challenge and beauty of the project.
APEX Grand Awards honor the outstanding works in each main category, while APEX Awards of Excellence recognize exceptional entries in each of the individual categories. 100 Grand Awards were presented to honor outstanding work in 12 major categories and 476 Awards of Excellence were distributed to recognize exceptional entries in 100 subcategories.
