THOMAS David B. Thomas has joined engineer-architect Gannett Fleming, Harrisburg, Pa., as a senior vice president and national director of transit and rail. Now based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., he was executive vice president and director of infrastructure operations and client development for ARCADIS. Granite Construction Inc., Watsonville, Calif., announced on May 17 a planned leadership transition, as of Sept. 1. James H. Roberts, executive vice president and chief operating officer since last September, has been named as president and CEO. He replaces William G. Dorey, who retires Aug. 31 after four years in the positions and 42 with the
VIESSMAN LABIB Maher Z. Labib, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the buildings and facilities division of engineering and construction management firm STV Inc., New York City, died on May 12 at age 67. STV declines to disclose how or where he died. Labib, who earned civil engineering degrees in Cairo, Egypt, joined the firm in 1996 from a previous role as vice president for facilities and buildings at Raytheon Infrastructure Services Inc. Labib “re-engineered … the division into one of the most profitable arms of STV,” says CEO Dominick Servedio. Warren “Bud” Viessman, professor emeritus of environmental
Even as the U.S. Navy awarded seven U.S. and Guam-based joint-venture teams on May 10 a $4-billion indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for design-build work on the Pacific island and nearby sites over five years, it also started to compete the first major task order under the contract. Photo: U.S. Navy, by Christopher S. Borgren II Looming troop transfer will unleash huge Guam building boom. Construction will support relocation of thousands of U.S. Marines to Guam from their current base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The contract is the largest ever by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Honolulu division. Under the
The U.S. Navy has selected seven U.S. and Guam-based joint venture teams for an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth $4 billion for design-build work mostly on Guam over the next five years. Construction will support relocation of thousands of U.S. Marines to the Pacific island from their current base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The award is the largest ever by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Honolulu-based division. Under the “multiple award construction contract,” the teams will compete with each other for task orders for new construction, renovation and upgrade work for Guam facilities. They range from barracks and medical
More than a week after a May 1 pipe break disrupted water supply in metropolitan Boston and forced two million residents to boil drinking water for 53 hours, authorities and contractors are trying to retrieve a critical pipe connector—which likely may manifest clues as to what caused the break—as well as documents detailing how upgrades to the affected pipe section were designed and installed more than a decade ago. Photo: AP/Wideworld Worker at site of Boston pipe rupture; a critical pipe connector has not been found. The rupture in a 150-ft section of pipe that carries water from the Quabbin
While environmental groups are cheering a May 4 Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate fly ash, utilities are concerned that potential designation of the material as a hazardous waste could prove costly. Photo: AP/Wideworld Liners would be required in coal-ash ponds to avert accidents like the disaster in 2008. The draft proposal would regulate for the first time coal ash under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Under the proposal, coal plants would be required to retrofit existing impoundments, which typically store the ash in liquid form, with composite liners. Enforcing the Regulation The more than 500-page proposal outlines
Crews at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Hanford nuclear-waste site in Washington state have placed the first of six massive, 50-ton shield doors at the site’s high-level waste treatment facility with a fit no wider than a human hair, say officials of San Francisco-based Bechtel National Inc., design-contractor for the $12.2-billion project on the 560-sq-mile site. Photo: Bechtel National Inc. Crews supervise installation of the first of six 50-ton radiation shield doors at Hanford site. Photo: Bechtel National Inc. The shield door is in a key area of the 65-acre plant complex, which, when completed, will vitrify high-level nuclear waste now
There was no middle ground about Floyd Dominy, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s longest-serving commissioner. He died April 20 in Boyce, Va., four months into his second century of life. Photo: courtesy of State of Utah Dominy oversaw completion of Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s. DOMINY Dominy was either the conquering hero of the west, pushing completion of huge dam projects on the Colorado River and elsewhere that brought water and power to growth-obsessed western states and work and wealth to their construction industry builders. Or he was the reviled enemy of environmentalists, a power-grabber whose projects were simply
HANSON Walter E. Hanson, a foundations expert and founder of the firm that became Hanson Professional Services Inc., a Springfield, Ill., engineer that ranks 174th on ENR’s list of The Top 500 Design Firms, died on April 4 in that city. He was 93. Hanson, who was the firm’s president for more than 30 years since its founding in 1954, specialized in foundation engineering and soil mechanics. A former engineering faculty member of the University of Illnois, Urbana-Champaign, he co-authored with noted experts Ralph Peck and Tom Thornburn “Foundation Engineering,” a textbook in those fields still widely used by students
Christine McEntee, executive vice president and CEO since 2006 of the American Institute of Architects, will leave her post July 23, the professional and lobbying group for 83,000 international architects, said April 19. No successor was named for McEntee, who is set to become executive director of the American Geophysical Union, a non-profit organization of 50,000 international geophysicists. MCENTEE AIA said that McEntee and the group’s “staff of seasoned professionals” will continue to run the group during the transition, and that a national search for a successor is under way. McEntee, the 153-year-old group’s first woman CEO, formerly served in
