SIMONELLI

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corp., Oak Brook, Ill., has named David E. Simonelli to the new position of president of dredging operations. He had been senior vice president of operations. The promotion comes as part of a restructuring at the company. As a result, Great Lakes has eliminated the position of chief operating officer, held by Richard M. Lowry since 1991. Lowry has left the company, which says it is the largest U.S. dredging contractor. Simonelli joined Great Lakes in 1978.

John G. Voeller , senior vice president of the federal division at Black & Veatch, Overland Park, Kan., has received the 2009 James B. Porter Jr. Award for Technology Leadership from FIATECH, a consortium that promotes technology implementation and innovation in engineering and construction. Voeller, a former FIA- TECH board member and winner of ENR’s 1998 Award of Excellence, was cited for developing, in 1979, POWRTRAK, a pioneering engineering, design and modeling application for powerplant construction. He is also a former White House fellow nominated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The award is named for the former chief engineer and vice president of engineering and operations at DuPont.

VOELLER

Jim Sebesta will head the new Minnesota region of engineer AKF Group, New York City, which includes new offices in Rochester and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Prior to joining the firm earlier this year as principal and leader of its educational market sector, he had been CEO-in-residence at the University of Minnesota. He is also co-founder and CEO of engineering firm Sebesta Blomberg.

James R. Field has joined engineer-architect Middough Inc., Cleveland, as vice president and regional business manager, charged with expanding its national presence in the oil-and-gas market, says the firm. Most recently, he was field project director at Williams Field Services, Tulsa, Okla., and previously held management posts.

URSPRUNG

Gregg Ursprung has joined Bergmann Associates, Albany, N.Y., as a senior discipline specialist in the company’s land development group. He had been principal and chief operating officer of Saratoga Associates, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., landscape architect.

The firm Ross & Baruzzini, St. Louis, has appointed Michael Robie as vice president of technology solutions, with a focus on U.S. aviation. He had been vice president of the Computing Technology Industry Association, Oak Brook, Ill.

Gwen K. Chouinard has joined HDR Architecture, Omaha, Neb., as director of business development in the Pasadena, Calif., office of its CUH2A unit. She was an associate at architect Harley Ellis Devereaux as well as its science-and-research business development manager.

DOMINY

Floyd Dominy , who pushed construction of immense dam and water-supply projects as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s longest-serving commissioner, died on April 20 in Boyce, Va., at age 100. Dominy served four administrations, from 1959 to 1969, during which he oversaw completion of the Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge and Navajo dams on the Colorado River, among others. Dominy considered the creation of Lake Powell, on the Arizona-Utah border, his “crowning jewel,” according to one published report. Often the subject of activist criticism, Dominy was portrayed by the late environmentalist Marc Reisner as a water power broker in the 1986 book “Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water.”