Top 25 Newsmakers

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Driving to his office in Avon, Mass., around 7 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2023, John Ballas received a call from his firm’s site supervisor overseeing two projects at Brockton Hospital in Brockton, Mass.

This year’s ENR Newsmakers clearly demonstrate a throughline between the past and the future—offering solutions to core industry problems and improvements to existing approaches. Read on to learn about their achievements.

It’s serendipitous for the Microsoft Thermal Energy Center team that young Stuart Yanow decided to take his older sister’s advice and major in mechanical engineering rather than health sciences.

Design firm WSP and UK-based contractor Mace Group have pioneered an industrialized construction method that has now delivered nodes and fixed links for a new airport concourse at London’s Manchester Airport that will expand capacity with 12 new gates. 

As editor-in-chief, I have the special privilege every year of presenting the ENR Award of Excellence in New York City and helping make a video about the winner.

For his tireless drive to engineer enduring solutions for a disaster-plagued world and his persistent push for both technical innovation and seismic design information exchange, ENR’s editorial team has selected Kit Miyamoto to receive its 59th Award of Excellence.

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.

North Dakotan Terry Williams is helping to manage the $3.2-billion Fargo-Moorhead Flood Diversion project, a first-of-its-kind endeavor.

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?’”