Turning 50 years of talk, stalled projects and storm wreckage into a $15-billion design and construction program that has rapidly built monumental storm-surge defenses around Greater New Orleans can only be achieved with smart, steady, determined and gutsy leadership.
Former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Col. Jeffrey A. Bedey, now retired, is credited with supplying a lot of that leadership by helping frame the effort around innovative processes. He successfully launched the program’s biggest job—a $1.3-billion, storm-surge barrier to guard the city’s eastern side, the last, massive wall-pile of which was driven on Oct. 21, 2009.