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Obituary: Tony Illia, 52, Was Public Face of Nevada DOT and Prolific ENR Correspondent

By Debra K. Rubin, Aileen Cho, Mark Shaw

Tony Illia, 52, was the public face in southern Nevada for the state DOT and a prolific contributor on construction topics for ENR and other publications. Image Nevada DOT

Tony Illia, the public face of the Nevada Dept. of Transportation as lead public information officer in its southern region and a former ENR journalist with a long tenure in covering the construction sector, died suddenly on July 30 in Las Vegas. He was 52.

The cause was heart related issues, a family member says.

The Nevada highway agency confirmed the death In an Aug. 2 statement, describing Illia, a seven-year NDOT manager, as "a committed public servant" and noting his "tireless work and kind spirit."

Illia wrote for ENR from 2000 to 2014, authoring detailed updates of such major projects as the Hoover Dam Bypass bridge, the $1.8-billion Project Neon interchange expansion in Las Vegas, and the $527-millon Lake Mead water intake tunnel, as well informed analyses of financial, labor and project management issues on other big regional projects and faced by industry firms and agencies.

His one-time ENR blog, Neon Desert, attracted strong industry readership.

In a 2009 cover story he authored about a safety turnaround at one Las Vegas high-rise project, CityCenter, which had a number of fatalities during construction, Illia set a vivid scene as he shadowed workers on site for several days: "It feels like the first day of school. There is excited talk, off-color jokes, old-friend reunions and nervous glances. People size one another up and separate into clusters—ironworkers, carpenters and Spanish-speaking laborers."

But his narrative and message became more serious by the article's end: "Leaders should be concerned because it is not clear that 10 hours of safety training can stem the carnage. If it were that simple, no one would ever get hurt." he wrote. "That seems unlikely because the classroom instruction, booklets and blunt warnings do not tell the whole story. You cannot force someone to behave safely even if you teach them all the rules. You cannot badger or terrify."

Doug Puppel, ENR’s Nevada correspondent and 20-year colleague of Illia, says that “as a former construction writer, Tony was invaluable in explaining the engineering behind the projects. He loved the industry and was always pointing out the safety procedures in place to protect the workers.”

Janice Tuchman, ENR editor-in-chief, adds, "We have lost a resource, a colleague and a friend."

Illia was a three-time winner of the Construction Writers Association's Robert F. Boger Journalism Award and was recognized five times for his work by the Nevada Press Association. He also wrote for the Las Vegas Business Press, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Architecture Las Vegas Magazine and was editor and co-publisher of Southern Nevada Real Estate Monthly.

A former Associated General Contractors spokesman, he also was a board member of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Construction and Engineering Management program's Industry Advisory Board.

Link here for Tony Illia legacy obituary.

As ENR Editor-at-Large for Energy, Business and Workforce, Debra K. Rubin has a broad vantage for news, issues and trends in global engineering and construction related to key areas of global energy development and transition, corporate business and management, regulation and risk and next-generation workforce development.

Debra also launched and manages ENR's Top 200 Environmental Firms annual ranking, which defines key players in the dynamic global market for environmental services; and is editor of ENR WorkforceToday e-newsletter on industry talent management news and trends. Click here to receive this free monthly newsletter.

She also is a key organizer of ENR's annual Groundbreaking Women in Construction conference, a major AEC industry forum for talent management and women's career advancement. Click here for more detail on plans in formation for the next live event.

Aileen Cho, ENR's deputy editor for infrastructure, is a born-again Angeleno and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. She has been honored, solo or with ENR colleagues, with several journalism awards. For ENR, she has traveled the world, clambering over bridges, touring airports, and descending into tunnels. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun (bridge engineers aren't far behind). She is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Eagle Rock, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

Mark Shaw is the former editor-in-chief of ENR Mountain States, co-editor of ENR Southwest, and the senior editor in charge of ENR's Contractor Business Strategy. He serves as ENR's Rocky Mountain bureau chief in Denver.