Hillman’s master’s thesis at Virginia Tech focused on lightweight floor systems for steel-framed buildings. Hillman worked with Prof. Thomas Murray in a research assistantship funded by the American Institute of Steel Construction. Diagrams: John Hillman Work on floor systems led to interest in composites. Related Links: Award of Excellence Winner 2010: John Hillman Hillman’s design used a 7.5-in.-thick steel deck atop a 5/8-in. deck perpendicular to each other and screwed together. The screws became shear connectors. The deck is topped by a layer of concrete. In his concept, the system could span 30 ft with flooring that was only 9.5

Shattering the stereotype of an ab- sent-minded professor, 20-year academic Gregory G. Deierlein is as focused as any design engineer. Illinois

Thanks to a quick-thinking bridge construction crew, a nearby crane and a brave man in a harness, a woman’s life was saved after the boat she and her husband were in slipped over a dam and left her trapped in a raging boil.

Turning 50 years of talk, stalled projects and storm wreckage into a $15-billion design and construction program that has rapidly built monumental storm-surge defenses around Greater New Orleans can only be achieved with smart, steady, determined and gutsy leadership.

Contractor Jeffrey D. Wagner calls the $84-million AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre “far and away the most challenging” job in his 21-year career.

How often did John R. Hillman, founder and president of Chicago-based HC Bridge Co., LLC, think about giving up on getting the industry to accept his hybrid bridge beam of concrete and steel with fiber-reinforced polymer materials?

Along Tenth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, the landscape is chocked with building projects, a marked contrast to the national commercial construction slump.

It's not good when one of the fastestgrowing counties in the country falls more than $386 million behind in roadbuilding.

Mark Loizeaux has imploded some 2,000 structures in his four-plus decades with Controlled Demolition Inc., which was started by his late father, John.