Rouzbeh Savary became hooked on concrete as a youth in Tehran, when he would frequently tag along to jobsites with his developer-father Davood. Even as a 9-year-old, he was mesmerized by crews casting concrete for his father’s multistory buildings.
Brian Witte was just a freshman in high school when he launched his infrastructure career. “It was a small town in Iowa, and the teacher’s neighbor was the town engineer for a dozen communities,” recalls Witte, vice president of construction engineering for Parsons Corp. “They needed help.
Phil Washington grew up on the South Side of Chicago in public housing with a single mom caring for a family of six. “The people building infrastructure in my community did not look like me,” he says. “I wondered, ‘Why can’t I get a job helping to build my own community?’”
Carla Sciara began working in construction as a design drafter for an electrical contractor on its Four Seasons Hotel project in Manhattan—the first hotel designed by the renowned architect I.M. Pei.
In 1968, the Whitehill Report on Professional and Public Education for Historic Preservation raised concerns about a dearth of tradespeople qualified in historic preservation work.
Pei has had an affinity for wood for 20 of his 44 years. “It’s a natural material that is close to art and architecture,” says the associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
The $21-million three-story, four-building residential complex in Palm Springs, Fla., built by Tom Murphy, Jr., and his company, Miami-based Renco USA, hardly appears unusual from the outside.
Kit Miyamoto’s effort as global CEO and humanitarian coordinator at engineering and disaster management firm Miyamoto International and president of the nonprofit Miyamoto Global Disaster Relief is not just work— it’s personal.