MCDONALDJonathan H. McDonald has joined design firm Atkins as vice president and senior practice manager for transit and rail. Based in San Francisco, he had been West division rail systems director at HNTB. McDonald is chair of the American Public Transportation Association's research and technology committee, and he has been a U.S. delegate to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a forum for 21 Pacific Rim countries that promotes regional free trade.Parsons Corp. has named Ane Deister vice president of the firm's environmental division, which focuses on its western-region commercial environmental business. Based in Sacramento, she was vice president of
CONDABrinderson LP, a Costa Mesa, Calif., industrial and petroleum contractor, has named Russell Conda as CEO, the company confirmed to ENR. He succeeds Gary Brinderson, who becomes chairman. Conda, a 30-year construction veteran in the oil-and-gas sector, had been senior vice president and general manager for WorleyParsons' western operations, based in California. He served as vice president and director of onshore projects at ABB Lummus Global (now CB&I Lummus) and as senior vice president of operations at Aker Solutions. Brinderson ranks at No. 288 on ENR's list of the Top 400 Contractors, with $187 million in 2011 revenue.Kirk Morrison
Bruce W. Woolpert, who left a career at Hewlett-Packard to lead Granite Rock Co., a family-owned Watsonville, Calif., construction materials supplier and paving contractor that grew with the state's once- booming economy, died on June 24 in a Lake Tahoe boating accident, says the firm. He was 61 and had been president and CEO since 1987. Granite Rock named as interim CEO Mark Kaminski, a board member and former chief of a metals producer. Granite Rock has 600 employees but did not disclose revenue. WOOLPERTGranite Rock's roots date to 1900, when Woolpert's grandfather, A.R. Wilson, launched the company and its
Two consultants that specialize in transportation public-private-partnership (P3) deals and alternative financing aim to gain larger platforms through new corporate owners.
Pea-Mora lost faculty vote of confidence and stepped down. Related Links: October 2011 letter to interim Columbia U. Provost John H. Coatsworth Pena-Mora resignation statement Even with strong support on campus and off in three years as dean of the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Feniosky Peña-Mora could not survive faculty dismay with his administration.The New York City-based university announced his resignation July 3 in an email to students and staff, and said faculty veteran Donald Goldfarb would become interim dean while a search for a permanent successor begins. He had been named several months
The status of a highly-showcased $3-billion bridge and road program in Bangladesh, seen as an economic driver for the impoverished nation, remains unclear after the World Bank canceled a $1.2-billion credit, citing the government’s “inadequate response” to charges of corruption on the project.
Related Links: Turner Construction Co. has elevated Mark Breslin to CEO of Sahara Turner—the contractor's new partnership with Indian developer Sahara Prime City Ltd. and Acropolis Capital Group, a financial investment firm—to oversee an estimated $2.5 billionin construction in India over the next five years. He had been vice president and general manager of Turner's New York North region. Breslin, who joined the firm as a superintendent in 1995, will be based in Mumbai. Turner promoted Rich Homan to executive vice president. Formerly senior vice president, he now adds supervision of the firm's multistate Southeast region to his duties. Homan
Jens-Peter Saul has joined Copenhagen-based engineering firm Ramboll A/S as CEO. Most recently, he had been CEO of Siemens Wind Power, a unit of the German conglomerate. Saul also served as managing director of Siemens Energy in the U.K. and northern and western Europe. As Ramboll CEO, Saul succeeds Flemming Pederson, who becomes a consultant to the company, the largest engineering firm in the northern Europe region. It ranks at No. 26 on ENR's list of the Top 200 International Design Firms, with $701 million in 2010 revenue. Pedersen had been CEO of Ramboll since 1992.Charles D. Linn has been
Photo by Don Wilson; courtesy of POWER Engineers Electrical union workers installed anchorages on both sides of the falls to stretch and secure a 2 in.-dia. wire cable. Photo by Steve Behal, courtesy of POWER Engineers High-wire stuntman Nik Wallenda successfully completed the 1,800-ft walk across Niagara Gorge on June 15. Related Links: Engineering News-Record Famed stuntman Nik Wallenda, who last month became the first person allowed to cross directly over Niagara Falls, did so on a 2-in.-dia. cable that was stretched 1,800 ft across the U.S.-Canada border waterfalls by a team of engineers, contractors and members of an electrical
In one of the industry's larger recent cross-border transactions, Montreal-based professional services firm Genivar Inc. has agreed to spend $431 million to buy the higher-revenue U.K. engineering firm WSP Group plc in a cash deal that includes pension liabilities. The deal, announced on June 7, would add 9,000 employees over a broader global footprint to Genivar's 5,500 mostly Canadian staffers, and officials said they did not expect "significant" staff cuts. The transaction is set to close by July 31, with a vote by WSP shareholders scheduled for July 13. Genivar will retain its listing on the Toronto Stock