VICK Ed Vick Jr., former chairman of transportation engineering firm Kimley-Horn and Associates, Raleigh, N.C., died on May 13 in Durham, N.C., after a brief battle with cancer. He was 76. Vick, who co-founded Kimley-Horn in 1967, was its president from 1972 to 1992 and chairman until 2000. The firm is the industry's 40th largest engineer on ENR's current Top 500 Design Firms list, with $320.9 million in 2010 revenue. It now works internationally with a 1,500-person staff. “Ed was an amazing visionary,” says Mark Wilson, the firm's current chairman. “He always pushed for excellence.” In 2007, Vick was inducted
Leslie G. “Les” McCraw, who expanded Fluor Corp. into a global diversified powerhouse in the 1990s as chairman and CEO but whose forays were costly and prompted successors to shed non-core businesses, died on May 25 in Greenville, S.C., at age 75. He suffered from cancer since 1997, when he stepped down from the construction giant. N/A Les McCraw led the contractor into new markets and pushed safety, the firm says. McCraw rose quickly through the Fluor executive ranks after its purchase of Greenville-based Daniel Construction in 1977. He was named Daniel CEO and joined the Fluor board in 1984.
The study of groundwater was pretty much “out of sight, out of mind’’ when James J. Geraghty began plying the field in the 1950s. Few schools offered courses, let alone degree programs. Even after forming a successful engineering partnership with David W. Miller and pioneering the study and practice of groundwater geology and contaminant flow, Geraghty once admitted that the much-ignored niche still “bored everybody” in his firm. Geraghty (left) wth partner Miller pioneered in a field considered a stepchild and set the standard. Geraghty, former chairman of Syosset, N.Y., consulting firm Geraghty & Miller, who co-wrote some of the
FEIGIN Michael M. Feigin has been named senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Weeks Marine Inc., the Cranford, N.J.-based marine and transportation contractor. Set to start May 31, he formerly is managing director for construction advisory services based in New York City for Navigant Consulting Inc., Chicago. Feigin also had been managing director and global construction practice leader at insurance broker Marsh and executive vice president and chief administrative officer at contractor Bovis Lend Lease. Weeks Marine ranks 86th on ENR’s list of the Top 400 Construction Firms, with $540 million in revenue in 2010.
BORRAS Rafael Borras was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 15 to the post of undersecretary for management at the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), says the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He has been in that role for a year under a congressional recess appointment that did not require confirmation. An online report in Federal Times says there were questions initially about Borras’ qualifications, but his confirmation vote was unanimous. He is a former U.S. Commerce Dept. assistant secretary for administration and General Services Administration regional administrator. Borras also is a former URS Corp. vice
MCGUIGAN Cathleen McGuigan has been named editor-in-chief of Architectural Record, the sister publication of Engineering News-Record. Formerly architecture critic and arts editor for Newsweek, she replaces Robert Ivy, who left the role in February to become executive vice president and CEO of the American Institute of Architects. Formerly, McGuigan was an architectural consultant and remains an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in Manhattan. Maj. Gen. Merdith W.B. “Bo” Temple is set to become the U.S. Army's acting chief of engineers when the planned retirement of Lt. Gen. Robert L. Van Antwerp takes effect. Antwerp has been
Arthur G. Witters, among the first construction program graduates of the University of Florida, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and a key figure in managing design, construction and early operation of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., died on April 16 in Orlando at age 91. The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, says Richard C. Witters, his son and president of design firm Witters & Bank, an Arlington, Va., engineering firm. Witters (center) shows model to Lt. Gen. Hubert Harmon (right), the academy’s first superintendent, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1954. WITTERS After earning his degree in 1941 and
Frank L. Stahl, 91, a Holocaust survivor who became a noted bridge designer and the chief engineer at Ammann & Whitney Consulting Engineers PC, at which he built and rehabbed many landmark U.S. spans and highways, died on April 17 in Sandy Springs, Ga. The New York City firm says his death was due to natural causes. Stahl stands at the record-settingVerrazano-Narrows bridge, which opened in 1964. STAHL Stahl joined A&W in 1946, working directly for its legendary founder, O.H. Ammann. Stahl held key roles in designing Philadelphia's Walt Whitman Bridge and New York's Verrazano-Narrows and Throgs Neck bridges in
SCHAEFER Jack Schaefer, a respected labor negotiator in Las Vegas, president of the Nevada Contractors Association and a board member of several union trusts and apprenticeship programs, died on April 15 in that city. He was 64 and had pancreatic cancer, according to the association. After a Denver-based marketing career, Schaefer became labor relations director in 1990 for the Associated General Contractors chapter in Las Vegas. He left five years later in a leadership rift and launched NCA, a rival trade group that represents contractors that are union-only. AGC represents both union and non-union companies. “At the time, AGC was
Unlike many architects, Jeanne Gang, designer of Chicago's mesmerizing Aqua Tower, respects builders and lives for construction. Paul Treacy, the 87-story skyscraper's concrete superintendent, knows this well. Gang had a profound effect on Treacy during construction of her first tower, an innovative residential building that evokes a vertical landscape of rolling hills and ponds. And it is not only because the designer and the “super” bonded over means and methods for Aqua's 78 unique and undulating slab edges, which have extreme cantilevers of up to 12 ft. Gang also left a lasting impression with Treacy on the home front. “My
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