When Bruce Lake, future president of James McHugh Construction Co., joined the firm in 1978 just after college graduation and was assigned as project manager for the firm's work on underground concrete structures for the Red Line extension of the Washington, DC, Metro subway line, it was company superintendent Donald Rieser who was sent from Chicago to show him the ropes.

The difficult concrete work on the cathedral-like arches was a Rieser specialty, as was expertise in keeping the complex project's delivery on schedule.