Over the past three years, the Business Development Team at W&A Engineering has partnered with UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute to support the Georgia Economic Developer Program. The Georgia Certified Economic Developer (GCED) program, created in partnership with the Georgia Economic Developers Association (GEDA), offers economic development professionals Georgia-specific training on practical topics that can be immediately applied within your community to achieve economic success. This certificate program helps improve the effectiveness and performance of economic development professionals by enhancing their knowledge and skills.

Because of our team’s vast experience in economic development around the southeast, W&A has been honored to be a speaker at the past three Economic Development Landscape Workshop events. The Economic Development Landscape Workshop is a central theme for all communities––large, medium, and small, and urban, suburban, and rural. In this core course, economic developers were able to explore their role in economic development and examine proven strategies, tools and best practices.

Participants of the workshop learned about the roles of private and nonprofit entities as well as how to identify their community’s assets and regional partners. The course also explored the economic development process and key components of an economic development plan that would help economic developers understand how their county fits into a larger economic region. Workshop participants were also encouraged to practice what they had learned using basic tools and approaches that they will be able to bring back to help their community develop its own economic development plan.