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

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

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

Related Links: Detailed obituary on William D. Kennedy Fifth International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security, March 14-16, 2012   KENNEDYWilliam D. "Bill" Kennedy, a transit engineering pioneer and a key figure in the development of tunnel ventilation systems for road and rail tunnels worldwide, died on June 23 at the age of 69. The cause was cancer, according to officials at Parsons Brinckerhoff, where he was a vice president and a 46-year company veteran.In the 1970s, Kennedy and a small group of colleagues worked with DeLeuw, Cather & Co. and Kaiser Engineers to develop the "Subway Environmental Design Handbook"

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 courtesy of Naval Facilities Engineering Command Gregory, a 1982 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was promoted to rear admiral in 2010. Her career has included tours of duty in Japan, the Mediterranean, Iraq, Haiti and several U.S. assignments. Related Links: Gregory bio Rear Adm. Katherine L. Gregory has been named the new commander of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command and the Navy’s chief of civil engineers, the Dept. of Defense announced on June 18. Gregory will be the first woman to lead NAVFAC in its long history, which it traces to the formation of the Bureau of Navy Yards and

Related Links: Oh, By the Way: Don Short's Last ENR Commentary Website of The Tempest Co. Don L. Short II, a nationally known cost estimating expert and a prolific crusader for fundamentals in the practice, died June 8 in Omaha. He was 60 years old and had been diagnosed with liver cancer several weeks earlier.Short was president and founder of The Tempest Co., an Omaha estimating firm and consultant. He also was a two-term past president and Fellow of the American Society of Professional Estimators.Known for his bluntness, Short authored numerous articles and opinions that appeared regularly on ENR.com and

Gerald Buckrell has joined engineer Hatch Mott McDonald as principal project manager in Thunder Bay, Ontario, the firm tells ENR. The role follows Millburn, N.J.-based HMM's May 29 purchase of Engineering Northwest Ltd., of which he was president. Sixty employees joined HMM.Judy L. Hricak has been promoted to the newly created position of chief marketing officer at Gannett Fleming, a Harrisburg, Pa., design and construction management firm. A 23-year company veteran, she also is a vice president.  PressleyHill International, the Marlton, N.J., risk consulting and construction management firm, has elevated Shawn L. Pressley to senior vice president and chief information