When Mark Callahan looks back on the arduous but successful seven-year effort of managing the project development and environment study for the $1.6-billion Wekiva Parkway, he gives credit to an unlikely group—environmentalists who once opposed it.
“Without the environmental groups on board, it wouldn’t have happened,” says Callahan, who led CH2M’s PD&E study effort for the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) and what was then the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority (OOCEA). Initiated in 2005—nearly 20 years after conceptual plans for the regional beltway—the PD&E study was key to winning federal approval, in 2012.