U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000


Skip to content U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway AdministrationU.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration

Construction

 
 
<< Previous Contents Next >>

Innovation in Vertical and Horizontal Construction: Lessons for the Transportation Industry

Appendix A - Biographies of Key Project Participants

Don T. Arkle graduated from Auburn University in 1977 with a Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering. All of Don's 27 years in the engineering profession have been with the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) where he currently holds the position of Chief of the Design Bureau. Mr. Arkle is one of ALDOT's delegates to the AASHTO Subcommittee on Design and a member of the Task Force on Geometric Design. Through the Geometric Design Task Force, Don has worked on two editions of the Green Book, the Bicycle Guide, the Pedestrian Guide and Rest Area Guide. Don is also one of ALDOT's delegates on the AASHTO Standing Committee on Environment where he currently serves on its steering committee. Don currently serves on the TRB Committee on Geometric Design and is one of their representatives on the TRB Joint Task Force on Context Sensitive Design.

Mr. Arkle is a Past President of the Alabama Section of ITE and a Past President of the Montgomery Branch, and Alabama Section of ASCE. He is ASCE's representative to the Joint Engineers Council of Alabama. Don has also served as the Chairman of JECA.

Mr. Arkle lives in Prattville, Alabama with his wife Cindy and their four children. He is active in his community as well, serving on the Prattville Planning Commission and as Scoutmaster of Troop 111. Mr. Arkle and his family are also active members of Trinity United Methodist Church.

Jerry Blanding is a graduate of Morgan State University with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. Jerry also received a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Maryland. Jerry Blanding has over 10 years of experience as an innovative contracting engineer and six years with FHWA. His areas of expertise include infrastructure, innovative contract, contract administration and accelerated construction technology transfer as well as quality control and assurance. Jerry Blanding has an Environmental Law Certification from the University of Maryland, School of Law.

Gary L. Brown is a graduate of Penn State University with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering. Gary has been employed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) for 29 years and has 21 years of experience in highway construction management as a Project Engineer, Construction Operations Engineer, and Quality Assurance Engineer. Gary also has seven years experience in construction contract procurement as the Engineering Coordinator and one year as the Division Technology Coordinator responsible for identifying and deploying new technology.

Amar A. Chaker is Director of Engineering Applications at CERF, after serving as Director of ASCE's Transportation and Development Institute, and staff contact for several Divisions and Councils within ASCE's Technical Activities, including the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering and the Council on Disaster Reduction.

He has held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Drexel University. He has served as Professor and Director of the Civil Engineering Institute of the University of Science and Technology of Algiers, where he conducted research funded by the European Commission and Algeria on the earthquake response of building structures, created the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, and participated in post-earthquake investigations (Mexico City and Tipasa, Algeria) and in the seismic vulnerability study of Djelfa, Algeria. He has taught undergraduate courses in Structural Analysis and Structural Design and graduate courses in Dynamics of Structures, Earthquake Engineering, Probability Methods and Risk Analysis, and Finite Element Method for Structural Analysis, and supervised numerous graduate theses.

As Technical Director of the Organization for Technical Control of Construction, (CTC) in Algeria, he reviewed the design of complex structures and evaluated existing structures, checking their stability and safety with respect extreme events, and exerted technical oversight over a large number of civil engineers in charge of reviewing a variety of construction projects. He co-chaired the Committee for the Algerian Earthquake-Resistant Design Code, and participated in the development of the 1981, 1983 and 1988 editions. He participated in post-earthquake investigations (El Asnam earthquake) and in a seismic hazard evaluation and urban microzonation study for the region of El Asnam.

He served as a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, and of the Editorial Board of Annales Maghrébines de l'Ingénieur. He was a Founding Member and President of the Algerian Earthquake Engineering Association. He is a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, the American Association for Wind Engineering and the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is a member of technical committees of ASCE's Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering and Council on Disaster Risk Management. He is author or co-author of over 50 publications.

He holds a Ph. D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a degree of 'Ingénieur Civil' from 'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées', Paris, France.

Steven D. DeWitt is Director of Construction, North Carolina Department of Transportation - Mr. DeWitt is a 1984 graduate of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. As Director of Construction he is responsible for activities related to contracting for construction of all major highway projects for NCDOT including contract lettings, specifications and standard drawings, utility relocations and designs, statewide administration of the NCDOT highway construction program, materials compliance, development of Traffic Control Plans, Design/Build activities, constructability and value engineering processes, and prequalification of private engineering firms and contractors. He has 20 years of experience with NCDOT in highway construction related roles.

He currently is Chairman of the Construction Section of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a member and Past Chairman of the Committee on Construction Management, a member of the TRB Design/Build Task Force, a member of the AASHTO Subcommittee on Construction, Chairman of the AASHTO SOC Contract Administration Section, and Co-Chairman of the AASHTO Design/Build Task Force.

John S. Dick is Structures Director on the Marketing Team at the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute in Chicago. He has been with PCI for 18 years. Until recently, he also served for 14 years as PCI's director of plant and personnel certification programs.

Before joining PCI, he spent 14 years in the precast concrete industry working at various positions in engineering and project management with companies located in Colorado, Iowa and Washington. In addition, he owned and operated a company located in Idaho that manufactured and sold explosives and provided custom blasting services.

Mr. Dick has a BS degree in Civil and Architectural Engineering from the University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming. John represents PCI in all of their bridge-related activities including liaison with FHWA, AASHTO, TRB and the National Concrete Bridge Council. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board, American Segmental Bridge Institute and the American Concrete Institute. John is Managing Editor and Project Manager for the PCI Bridge Design Manual and plans and administers the annual National Bridge Conference. He has held positions on numerous industry committees. He is presently a member of the AASHTO Technology Implementation Panel on Prefabricated Bridge Elements and Systems. He served as Chair of the FHWA Research Review Committee on Strand Transfer and Development Length and served on the Advisory Committee during the development and evaluation of the FHWA Bridge Engineers Training Course.

Alan Forsberg is the Public Works Director for Blue Earth County, a County with a population of 55,000 urban and rural residents located about 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota. He has 20 years of experience with planning, funding, design, and construction of roads and bridges for local governments.

Ian M. Friedland was Bridge Technology Engineer for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) at the time this study was initiated. He is currently the Technical Director for Bridge and Structures R&D.

Prior to joining the FHWA in 2002, Mr. Friedland was Associate Director for Development with the Applied Technology Council (ATC), a nonprofit structural engineering organization concerned with natural and man-made hazards mitigation for the built environment, from 1999 - 2002; Assistant Director for Transportation Research at the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), from 1992 - 1999; and a Senior Program Officer with the National Academy of Science's Transportation Research Board, where he was in charge of all bridge research conducted in the AASHTO-sponsored National Cooperative Highway Research Program, from 1985 - 1992.

Mr. Friedland has been a member of numerous national task forces and advisory committees, including the FHWA Technical Advisory Committee responsible for the development of the FHWA-supported bridge management system PONTIS; the FHWA Task Force on Scaffolding, Shoring, and Formwork; the FHWA Research Council on Curved Bridges; and the AASHTO Special Task Force on Metrication. He is a registered professional engineer, and is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Transportation Research Board, currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ASCE Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering, and recently stepped down Associate Editor of the ASCE Bridge Engineering Journal. Mr. Friedland received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Cornell University in 1977 and a Master of Science degree in structural engineering and structural mechanics from the University of Maryland in 1978.

Michael G. Goode is the Vice President and Director, Industry Programs with Civil Engineering Research Foundation (ASCE). He has 35 years in urban transportation infrastructure - building, operating, maintaining, planning and designing - USA, Europe and Middle East, specializing in rail transit.

Civil engineering degree from University of Leeds, UK; MBA from George Mason University, Virginia; the Executive Program from University of Virginia, Darden Graduate School of Business; PE - Virginia, PMP - Project Management Institute Certification.

15 years building Washington DC's Metrorail system, 10 years in international transportation consulting with Parsons Brinckerhoff and CH2M HILL. 7 years leading TELFORD Consulting, focused on serving clients in pursuit of breakthrough performance improvement in sustainable, secure, and cost-effective, design, construction, operations & maintenance, of transportation infrastructure worldwide. Hallmark of this consulting practice was the adoption of asset management methods, including effective handling of security risks, and advocacy for the long-term stewards - the operations and maintenance teams - throughout the project and facility life-cycles.

Currently Mr. Goode is Director of Industry Programs at the Civil Engineering Research Foundation, a component of the American Society of Civil Engineers, where he is leading initiatives in infrastructure security, asset management, transportation, and capacity building for the infrastructure of the developing world.

At George Mason University in Virginia, Mr. Goode has supported creation of a Center for Homeland Security in the School for Information Technology and Engineering. The objective is to establish a center of excellence for consulting, education, and research in application of holistic, systems engineering approaches to developing and managing infrastructure in full consideration of all types of performance risk, including terrorism. Mr. Goode is also teaching graduate students both construction and facilities management at The George Washington University.

He is active at the local and national levels in the American Public Transportation Association, the Mid Atlantic States chapter of UK Institution of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Highway Engineers, the Transportation Research Board, and the American Society of Civil Engineers, where he recently chaired the Board's International Committee.

David Hohmann graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1982. David is the Director of Bridge Design for the Bridge Division of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). He has over 22 years experience in bridge design, all of it with the Texas Department of Transportation. David oversees the activities and direction for statewide bridge design in Texas. This includes both in-house design staff and evergreen bridge design consulting engineering firms. David is a member of TxDOT's structural Research Management Committee 5 and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. David is also a member of both the AASHTO Technical Committee for Concrete Structures (T-10) and the AASHTO Technical Committee for Steel Design (T-14).

Cameron Kergaye is an Engineering Management Fellow at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) for the 2004 calendar year. He is responsible for research on technical and policy matters related to intelligent transportation systems, asset management, construction materials and geometric designs of highways. He is involved in several domestic and international information exchange programs in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration and the National Cooperative Highway Research Foundation, and he is a liaison for AASHTO's Special Committee on International Activity Coordination.

Prior to his fellowship position at AASHTO, Cameron was a professional engineer for 12 years at the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) where he managed several engineering groups: consultant engineering services, value engineering, access management, statewide permitting, and the utilities and railroad divisions. Cameron was also Quality Manager on Utah's $1.6 billion Design/Build project for the 3 years leading to the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Early in his career with UDOT he was a Materials Engineer for 5 years and was responsible for the quality and management of several State laboratories.

His educational background is primarily in Civil Engineering where he holds a Bachelor and Master of Science degree from the University of Utah. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Humanities. Cameron is a recipient of quality service awards for achievements Design/Build and design engineering services. He has authored numerous publications on construction materials, laboratory quality, traffic analysis, and access management.

Robert Kogler is currently Team Leader for Bridge Design & Construction Research for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). In this capacity he is responsible for development and oversight of FHWA's research and technology transfer efforts in the area of advanced, high performance materials for bridges, and corrosion protection for structures. Mr. Kogler has been with FHWA for eight years, during which time he has headed the corrosion protection technology program for steel bridges. Specifically his expertise lies in the test and evaluation of corrosion protection materials and coatings and in development of corrosion protection programs for steel bridges. Prior to coming to FHWA, Mr. Kogler spent seven years in the consulting engineering field focusing on corrosion engineering. He has extensive experience in corrosion protection applications in the marine industry including significant coating and cathodic protection design work for the US Navy. Mr. Kogler is also currently President of SSPC: The Society for Protective Coatings, and is a Past President of the Washington Paint Technical Group, both professional technical societies. Mr. Kogler holds a degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jon Magnusson is Chairman/CEO of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Inc., leads what many people consider one of the most creative consulting engineering firms in the country.

He is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Washington and earned his Masters at the University of California, Berkeley. He was elected as an officer in the company at the age of 29 and CEO at the age of 34. In the following eighteen years the firm has received thirteen national engineering excellence awards for innovation and quality from the American Council of Engineering Companies.

Jon has been the Structural Engineer-in-charge on $2-billion worth of construction projects in the last five years alone. His projects include engineering landmarks such as Safeco Field, Hawaii Convention Center, Qwest Field, Benaroya Hall, Experience Music Project, Key Arena, and the Seattle Public Library. He consults to many of the world's architectural "stars" including Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaus.

The reach and impact of the firm is worldwide with projects in 44 states and 35 countries. The firm has performed the structural engineering for more than 60 high-rise buildings in the last 15 years. His travel now exceeds a total 1.7 million air miles (equivalent of almost 80 times around the globe), visiting 37 states and 26 countries.

Jon has published 30 articles and papers in both technical and popular media. He is in high demand as a speaker, with 130 presentations completed for both engineering and non-technical groups. After the attack on the New York World Trade Center, Jon was sought out by all forms of print and broadcast media to help explain what had happened and what the events mean for the design of buildings in the future. He granted more than 100 media interviews including ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings, Discovery Channel, BBC, NPR, History Channel, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Good Morning America, NBC News, CBS News with Dan Rather, and many others.

His community activities have focused on service to youth programs and Children's Hospital and Medical Center.

Mahendra G. Patel assumed his duty as Chief Engineer at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) in December 2003. He leads four Highway Administration Bureaus in establishing and implementing Department-wide policies, criteria, standards and procedures for the highway system to assure statewide conformation and uniformity. Major functionalities of his area include project/program delivery, procurement of engineering and construction contracts, transportation maintenance and operations, and system performance evaluations.

Prior to re-joining PennDOT, Mr. Patel headed the construction arm of Hersha Enterprises from July 1999 until November 2003. At Hersha he oversaw general construction of motels, upscale residential homes, public schools, restaurants, etc. worth approximately $30 million per year. His company performed construction management, owner representative duties and general contractor functions.

Prior to joining the Hersha Group, he was Director of the Bureau of Design in PennDOT. In this capacity, he was responsible for all activities starting from initiation of highway and/or bridge design to start of construction which encompassed retaining design consultants and construction contractors, environmental clearance, completion of design and bid documents, securing right-of-way for projects, bidding projects, and executing all contracts worth as much as $1.3 billion per year. During his tenure of over 30 years with PennDOT, he designed over 200 bridges and culverts, coordinated/expedited multi-year bridge and Interstate highway construction programs with a combined value of $2-3 billion, and also served as the Chief Bridge Engineer. He also served on numerous state and national professional organizations as a member, director, secretary, or chairman, and received numerous recognition awards.

He received his post graduate degree in structural engineering from Brigham Young University, Utah, and bachelors' degree from M.S. University, India. He is a registered Professional Engineer and Professional Surveyor in Pennsylvania.

Cheryl Allen Richter is a Pavement Technical Coordinator for the Highways for LIFE Team at the Federal Highway Administration. Her past positions at the Federal Highway Administration include Team Leader for Portland Cement Concrete Pavement Research and Development, Long Term Pavement Performance Program. She has also held positions with the Strategic Highway Research Program and New York State Department of Transportation. Ms. Richter holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science from Cornell University as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Ms. Richter is a Professional Engineer in the State of Maryland.

<< Previous Contents Next >>
Updated: 06/27/2017
Federal Highway Administration | 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE | Washington, DC 20590 | 202-366-4000