California People: Construction business updates for July 2017
Jon Amdur has joined Kleinfelder in Oakland, Calif., as vice president/senior technical manager. He will help expand the firm’s sediment remediation and dredging practice as well as enhancing its drone program. Most recently, he worked for Haley & Aldrich and previously was San Francisco Bay Area regional manager for AECOM and URS.
Zeynep Erdal was named water business leader at AECOM for the Los Angeles metro region, encompassing Southern and Central California and Nevada. She will be based in AECOM’s office in Orange, Calif. Erdal previously served as client services manager and principal technologist at CH2M HILL since 2002.
Andrew Anagnost was appointed president and CEO of Autodesk. He was previously the San Francisco company’s interim co-CEO and senior vice president of business strategy and marketing. Anagnost is a 20-year veteran of Autodesk, working in technical and management roles. He holds a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering and computer science from Stanford University.
Lindsay Green has joined R&A Architecture + Design in Culver City, Calif., as studio director. She has more than a dozen years of experience as a designer and project manager, most recently at BNIM in Los Angeles. Green has also worked on interior renovation designs for such projects as Chait Day Media Arts Lab, Sony Pictures Entertainment Studios and Amgen’s Building 21 in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Scott Fenical was appointed leader of Mott MacDonald’s coastal practice in North America. Based in the firm’s San Francisco office, he has 19 years of experience specializing in vessel hydrodynamic processes, mooring analysis, ship maneuvering simulations, coastal processes analysis, numerical modeling, dredging and marine habitat design.
Kelly Boyer was named West Coast director for Jonathon Rose Cos.’ newly acquired community capital business in Los Angeles. Boyer will be sourcing new investment opportunities and managing third-party loans involving the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development’s Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance program. She was formerly HUD FHA/MAP director and FHA chief underwriter for Citibank N.A./City Community Capital.
Obituary
Paul Matt, 85, who died on June 30, had a 65-year career building more than 450 structures, including such Southern California icons as the Skirball Cultural Center, The Broad, the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Beverly Hills and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple restoration.
“My father loved his work and the people he collaborated with,” said Steve Matt, CEO of MATT Construction, Santa Fe Springs, Calif., in a statement. “During his recent battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he continued to apply his amazing passion for building.”
After working 22 years at C.L. Peck and joining the firm’s board of directors, Paul Matt left to co-found MATT Construction in 1991. He told ENR last year that he formed his fledgling company around the idea that if a project is “difficult to build or even close to impossible to build, there’s not going to be many people competing for it.”
In 2015, Matt won the ENR California Legacy Award. In a nomination letter for the award, architect Moshe Safdie wrote, “Matt brings unique qualities to the collaboration between contractor, architect, engineer and owner,” adding that Matt “invests in an effort to understand the project’s objectives and comes forward with innovations which are both effective and economical.”
To cite one example, Matt employed experimental mock-ups and new forming methods to deliver the Louis Kahndesigned Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.
