Susan Kurland

Susan Kurland, U.S. Transportation Dept. assistant secretary for aviation and international affairs, will join the Chicago Dept of Aviation as deputy commissioner for air services development, as of May 16. Kurland, who has been in her current role since 2009, was touted by Chicago media as front-runner to be aviation commissioner. Ginger Evans was named to that post in mid-2015. Kurland also is a former vice president and deputy general counsel at US Airways.

NJ Transit has confirmed earlier speculation, announcing April 6 that it has named William “Bill” Crosbie as executive director. Industry sources say he recently stepped down as president and CEO of North American operations for Paris-based transportation firm SYSTRA. He also had been chief operating officer at Amtrak until 2010, Set to start on April 25, Crosbie succeeds interim chief Dennis Martin and replaces Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim, who left NJ Transit on Dec. 28, after 18 months, to be president of New York City Transit.

Robert A. “Bob” Rubin has joined Bob Rubin: Construction Disputes Avoidance and Resolution as founder and CEO. The New York City consulting firm specializes in construction project dispute resolution and risk management. He had been special counsel at the law firm of McCarter and English LLP.

OBITUARIES

James E. “Tom” Sawyer, 84, former president and chief operating officer of noted U.S. bridge engineer J.E. Greiner Co., died in Hudson, Fla., on March 18. He led design of signature long-span bridges that include Florida’s Sunshine Skyway and the Houston Ship Channel Bridge. URS Corp. bought the firm in 1995. Sawyer also was a national president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, where he was a strong engineering education advocate.

Pat M. Quinn, 83, former corporate vice president of global engineer Louis Berger and a 49-year firm veteran who was one of its earliest non-U.S.-based project managers, died March 16, says the firm. It did not note the location of his death. Quinn worked on some of Berger’s “most complex and challenging projects,” it says, such as Afghanistan’s Kabul-to-Kandahar Highway and the Phnom Penh-to-Sihanoukville Road through the rebel-occupied Khmer Rouge territory in Cambodia.