Four construction executives will receive 2012 Golden Beaver awards from The Beavers, a Los Altos, Calif., group of practitioners mostly based in the western states.

Darryl Schimeck has joined Veolia ES Industrial Services Inc., League City, Texas, as president and CEO. He previously had been president of Atlantic Plant Services Inc., an industrial services firm, and is a former executive at Waste Management Inc. Veolia ES Industrial, a unit of Chicago-based Veolia Environmental Services North America Corp., is the largest industrial cleaning services company in North America.Matheson Financial Advisors, a McLean, Va.-headquartered financial adviser and investment banking consultant to engineers, environmental firms and contractors, has elevated David Cohen to the position of managing director. He continues to head the firm's Boston office. Matheson also has

WHITAKERCynthia Whitaker, 69, former preconstruction vice president at ISEC Inc., an Englewood, Colo., contractor, died on Oct. 15 of cancer, says the firm. She joined the firm in 1978, retiring in 2005. ISEC ranks at No. 45 on ENR's Top 600 Specialty Contractors list, with $252.5 million in revenue.

Related Links: Remembrance of Lynn Bellenger Contribute to Lynn Bellenger Memorial Fund Lynn G. Bellenger spent 200 days traveling the globe in her 2010-11 term leading the 55,000-member American Society ofHeating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers. But Nancy Jendryaszek, with whom Bellenger co-founded Pathfinder Engineers & Architects LLP, Rochester, N.Y., says colleagues "found it amusing because Lynn was directionally challenged." A leader in energy modeling software development as well as being ASHRAE's first woman president, Bellenger died on Oct. 19 at age 62. The firm did not disclose the cause of death.Bellenger told a Rochester business publication last April of

ENR's Top 20 Under 40 competition will identify some of the design and construction industry's leaders of tomorrow. Winners will be highlighted in ENR's regional editions. Related Links: ENR California Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR Midwest Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR Mountain States Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR New York Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR Southeast Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR Southwest Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form ENR Texas & Louisiana Top 20 Under 40 Nomination Form Who are the design and construction leaders of tomorrow? That’s the question

HAUSSMANN  Louis D. Haussmann has been elevated to chief operating officer of Baxter & Wodman Inc., a Crystal Lake, Ill.-based municipal engineering firm. A 14-year veteran, he had been head of its transportation group and joined the board in 2009. Baxter & Woodman is ranked at No. 352 on ENR's list of the Top 500 Design Firms, with $27.5 million in 2010 revenue.Thomas Clinard has joined Chicago transportation engineer Alfred Benesch & Co. as vice president and Tennessee division manager. The move follows the Oct. 3 acquisition of Clinard Engineering Associates, a Brentwood, Tenn., design firm, Clinard was a managing

Burton S. Sperber was a “passionate and accomplished” magician, says the California landscape architecture firm he founded and ran for decades. But it was Sperber's vision and tough business skills, not magic, that built Valley Crest Landscape Cos., Calabasas, into the billion-dollar business it became before recession nipped its bottom line. Sperber, 82, died on Sept. 30 in Santa Monica, Calif., of complications from surgery, says the firm.With only a high school education and experience in his father's nursery, Sperber acquired a small landscape business in 1949 for $700 and was busy as post-WWII California boomed. Valley Crest helped its

Photo by Nadine Post for ENR Since Antony Wood joined the council in 2006, firm membership has quadrupled. Antony Wood has been the executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat since October 2006. Wood, 41, is also a professor of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, which is where the council is headquartered. Last year, he earned his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Nottingham, where he taught before he relocated to Chicago to lead the council. His Oct. 12 interview with ENR at the CTBUH Seoul World Conference, which was held

  BURCHAMU.S. Army Col. Margaret W. Burcham was selected on Sept. 18 to command the Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, based in Cincinnati. She is the first woman to serve as a division commander and engineer on a full-term basis, says the Corps. Burcham will lead seven Corps districts in a 17-state region that includes 4,800 staffers and an annual operations and construction budget exceeding $2 billion. She formerly served as an Army division chief at the Pentagon and as a Corps district commander in Iraq, among other posts. Col. Janice Dombi was named temporary commander

Ben C. Maibach Jr., who joined Michigan contractor Barton Malow Co. as a laborer in 1938 and rose to become chairman of what, nearly 40 years later, is now a major U.S. building construction firm, died on Sept. 24 in Farmington Hills, Mich., at age 91.MAIBACHe died of cancer, says a spokeswoman.Maibach, who followed his carpenter-foreman father into the firm, was instrumental in creating its profit-sharing and pension plan in 1951 as a rising executive. It was a first for a U.S. contractor, says the firm.Maibach became president in 1960 and retired as chairman in the early 1980s but was