AECOM Exec Is Atkins Unit CEO; Quake Expert Ray Clough Dies
U.K.-based design firm Atkins has named industry veteran and AECOM top executive George L. Nash Jr. as CEO of its North America unit, replacing L. Joe Boyer, who resigned in February after three years. Nash, who takes the role on Oct. 31, was AECOM group president of energy, infrastructure and industrial construction since 2014, when it acquired URS Corp. He had been president and chief operating officer of that firm’s energy and construction division, which included work in power, industrial, infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, and federal environmental sectors.
Atkins North America COO Barry Schulz and CFO David Quinn have been leading the Tampa, Fla.-based unit. Boyer now is the Austin-based CEO of construction and program management at Bernhard Capital Partners, a role he assumed in August, says his Linked-In profile.
Miles Bernard, managing director of U.K.-based Mouchel Consulting Ltd., will join Montreal design giant WSP Global in an undisclosed executive role in London following the Canadian firm’s continued European expansion in its $92-million purchase of the British firm from contractor Kier Group, announced on Oct. 12.
Specializing in transportation and water sectors, Mouchel employs around 1,700 people in the U.K. and the Irish Republic and another 300 in the Middle East. The firm reported $153 million sales in the year ending June 30, resulting in a $9.8 million operating profit.
Mouchel will operate independently “under existing brands for an appropriate period of time,” says a WSP spokeswoman.
Kier acquired Mouchel in June last year when it bought the design firm’s parent company MRBL Ltd. for its national highways management and maintenance and facilities management operations. At that time, the Mouchel group employed 6,500 people mainly in the U.K., which accounted for 85% of sales, according to Kier.
WSP’s Parsons Brinckerhoff unit also named Eduardo Martinez a senior vice president and managing director of the Miami buildings practice. He was executive vice president at Cosentini Associates. Also hired as a senior VP and Southeast region business manager for transportation and infrastructure is Pamela Townsend. She was a senior VP at Dewberry.
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Sarah Kuchera has been elevated to managing director of the California buildings practice, based in San Francisco, from studio leader in WSP/PB’s Dallas office. The firm also hired Drew Galloway as vice president and transit and rail planning director, based in Newark, N.J. He had been deputy chief of planning for Amtrak, based in Philadelphia.
RailWorks Corp., a New York City track and transit systems construction firm, has named Kevin Riddett president and CEO. Most recently, he was president of the Siemens mobility division, responsible for its North America portfolio of rail and intelligent traffic management system units.
Daniel P. Reynolds has joined Gilbane Building Co., Providence, as executive vice president. He had been a division chief operating officer and senior vice president at The Walsh Group. He also is a former senior VP and construction managing director at CH2M Hill.
GRW, a Lexington, Ky., engineering, architecture and geospatial consultant, has promoted Brad Montgomery to president. He succeeds Ron Gilkerson, who now is chairman. Montomery, a 34-year firm veteran, also is the current president of the American Consulting Engineers Council of Kentucky and a board member of the American Water Works Association.
HNTB Corp. has named Senior Vice President Sanja Zlatanic to a new role as chair of its national tunnel practice. Based in New York City, she directs tunneling and underground projects and leads global underground business development in the transportation and water resources sectors; she continues as chief tunneling engineer. The firm also elevated Kevin Hoeflich to toll services chairman. Also a senior VP, he had been vice chairman.
Geosyntec Consultants Inc. has elevated Peter Zeeb to president and CEO, succeeding Rudolph Bonaparte, a 20-year veteran in the role. Zeeb, who had been a senior principal hydrogeologist based in Massachusetts, joined Geosyntec in 1999. Bonaparte becomes chairman and also will teach at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
OBITUARY: Ray W. Clough, a pioneer in the field of earthquake engineering—beginning in the 1950s—died on Oct. 8. He was 96.
At the time of his death, Clough was professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1950 to 1995. While there, in 1956, he co-authored a classic paper on the finite-element method of structural analysis, which revolutionized the design of buildings and other structures, such as dams. Finite-element analysis (FEA) became routinely used in engineering.
At Berkeley in the 1960s, Clough pioneered methods for computer quake analysis of tall buildings that are the basis of commercial computer programs, such as SAP 2000. In 1975, he published, with colleague Joseph Penzien, “Dynamics of Structures,” which is still used.
“Ray was a great guy and a humble man, yet he was tremendously accomplished,” says Jack P. Moehle, a Berkeley professor of structural engineering who met his “mentor of sorts” in 1980. “He developed the earliest hysteresis models for nonlinear analysis of reinforced-concrete structures,” says Moehle. “He’s not often cited for that.”
Beginning in the 1970s, Clough directed the Earthquake Engineering Research Center at Berkeley, the predecessor to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, known as PEER. There, Clough worked with Penzien on the design of one of the world’s largest multidirectional shake tables.
Clough received many honors for his work, including the George W. Housner Medal from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In 1994, President William J. Clinton presented Clough with a National Medal of Science for outstanding contributions to the fields of FEA, structural dynamics and earthquake engineering.
