Nominations for SPE International Awards are open—if you're thinking about nominating a colleague, now is the time to start. Nominations close on 15 February 2027.
I've sat on both sides of the nomination process—as nominee, nominator, and letter writer. A winning nomination isn't really a list of accomplishments. It's an argument, and every good argument answers three questions: why, how, and what.
Start With the Criteria: Identifying Who
There’s a step that comes first and gets skipped too often—reading the award criteria closely and matching them against the nominee’s actual body of work. Every award defines impact, scope, and leadership differently, and the committee evaluates nominees against those specific criteria, not a general impression of a strong career. This is “identifying who.” Identifying the right person, not just someone who is accomplished, but someone whose accomplishments align with what the award specifically recognizes. Once that alignment is genuine, the rest of the package is about building the argument.
Why Does the Work Matter?
This is the case for significance, not just that the work was done, but why it mattered. A résumé line about building a model says nothing on its own. The “why” is the sentence that follows it. One resiliency study I led began as a technical exercise using disruption scenarios. The “why” was that it was ultimately incorporated into a national policy review that reshaped how an entire sector plans. Committees aren’t scoring effort, they’re scoring consequence and impact.
How Does the Nominee Stand Out?
This is the case for distinction. Plenty of nominees have long, credible careers. What separates a winner is showing how they did the work differently, whether through a methodology they pioneered, a discipline they extended into new territory, or a way of leading others that was not easily replicated. The “how” is what makes a nomination sound like this specific person, rather than a template.
What Did They Actually Accomplish?
This is the evidence: specific, concrete, and comparable to what other nominees present. A résumé compresses a career into shorthand; a nomination form requires the full sentence version. I once built a disruption-modeling tool that was later used to analyze major natural disasters. On a résumé, that’s a single line. In a nomination, it becomes a paragraph explaining what it covered, who relied on it, and how it informed the response to major events.
Putting It Together
A winning package interlaces all three: lead with the what, follow with the why, and close with the how. Do this consistently across the nomination form and the letters of recommendation, and the committee won't be reading a list of accomplishments, they'll be reding a compelling case.
Interview the nominee. Don’t just work from their résumé; sit down with them and ask, in detail, about what they’ve done. Nominees routinely leave out accomplishments they consider too minor to mention. But “minor” is relative to the award. What a nominee shrugs off as a footnote may be exactly the type of service or leadership the award is designed to recognize.
While preparing a nomination for the SPE International Giovanni Paccaloni Young Professional Service Award, I had to dig deep to uncover volunteer activities outside the nominee's professional life, including mentoring student athletes and working with an orphanage, because the award specifically recognizes meaningful service beyond the workplace. You generally won’t find that in a résumé.
That experience reinforced a few lessons that apply to almost every nomination:
- Start early. The writing always takes longer than the doing.
- Choose letter writers who know the work, not just the person. Give them the completed form and a real conversation about the most impactful accomplishments before they write.
- Don’t undersell it. Engineers are trained toward modesty: nomination season is the wrong place for it.
- Expect more than one try. A well-built package is rarely wasted; it becomes the foundation for a stronger renomination.
At its core, a nomination package is a technical argument: state what was done, explain why it mattered, and show how it was distinct. The same discipline behind building a model or leading a risk assessment is the discipline behind building a case for someone's career. And don't forget—you may be a candidate too. Ask someone to nominate you.
There are countless accomplished colleagues in our industry who are never nominated simply because no one took the first step. Don't let that be the reason a deserving colleague is overlooked this year.
Will you choose someone to nominate?
