Bob Clark has grown Clayco from a small St. Louis design-builder more than 30 years ago into an annual high performer on the ENR Top 400. In this ENR Exec Talk, he talks with Jeff Yoders and Aileen Cho about his Ride the Wave tour where he’s visiting all of Clayco’s job sites, how he founded the company on the premise of changing adversarial and antiquated processes, a bad call from OSHA on encouraging employees to get vaccinated and how far the industry still has to go to deliver the employee diversity results it needs.

CannonDesign’s vice president and director of BIM and VDC programs tells us about levels of development, modular construction, how architects and contractors are creating more model-friendly contract documents that allow better collaboration in the design and construction process, the changing process of project delivery and how redesigning that process, itself, has become a challenge, and even a little about working remotely during the pandemic. 

The director of the Nevada Department of Transportation talks about new highway and public works projects, navigating the maze of federal transportation spending, new ways to look at investment in infrastructure, MAP-21 and even a little about STEM and her inventive Twitter handle. 

As managing director of American Airlines, Palmina Whelan guided strategic plans for airport master planning and development across the Northeast, Dallas and Central Regions of both the U.S. and Canada for 15 years. She managed more than $6 billion in capital construction and worked with contractors, designers, airport authorities and state and regional government stakeholders. She recently launched her new company, Palmina Whelan Strategic Solutions.

The President and CEO of Gilbane Building Co. and former chief delivery officer at CH2M Hill Cos., Michael McKelvy talked with ENR Managing Editor Scott Blair about Safety Week 2021 (May 3-7), an event that he’s the chair of this year. McKelvy and Blair discussed this year’s theme, holistic safety and the importance of everyone at the job site being both physically and mentally present.

The former executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority and director of the California Dept. of Transportation is now leader of state and local transportation at Amazon Web Services. Randy Iwasaki spoke with ENR Transportation Editor Aileen Cho and Associate Technology Editor Jeff Yoders about new highway technology, robotics and autonomous vehicles and how to manage change in large organizations.

HNTB’s corporate president of infrastructure and mobility equity is responsible for shaping transportation and mobility equity policy through collaboration with federal, state and local agency leaders. Diana Mendes spoke with ENR Transportation Editor Aileen Cho and Associate Technology Editor Jeff Yoders about how transportation design can unite diverse neighborhoods, not divide them, how to recruit and retain diverse talent and even a project near and dear to her heart, the Washington, DC Metro System.