Related Links: Company obituary of co-founder Bill Larson and links to related stories LARSONWilliam L. "Bill" Larson, who co-founded an architecture practice that grew in 45 years to become the 500-person design-engineering firm DLR Group, Overland Park, Kan., died on June 29 in Pinetop, Ariz. He was 88. The cause of death was complications from a series of falls, says a company spokesman.Larson was a vice president at architect Leo A Daly before founding his own firm in 1966, along with architect Irving R. Dana and engineer James P. Roubal. Dana Larson Roubal and Associates became DLR Group in
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
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"
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
Related Links: Minimee Cited by ENR for Olympian Efforts to Spur Bridge Construction Utah Embraces Accelerated Construction Method AASHTO obituary of James C. Minimee James C. “Jim” McMinimee, who pioneered accelerated bridge construction techniques in Utah and across the U.S., died suddenly on May 10 in Washington, D.C. He was 51. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, for which he was a contractor, says he died of natural causes, but did not provide further detail. McMinimeeMcMinimee led AASHTO’s effort to implement the latest congressionally-mandated Strategic Highway Research Program, a transportation-sector effort probing highway congestion.For 25 years, he
Related Links: ENR cover story on BE&K-1993 Theodore C. "Ted" Kennedy, who pushed non-union contracting to new arenas as CEO of BE&K Inc., but worked with organized labor and owners to boost construction safety, productivity, ethics and image, died May 8 in Birmingham, Ala. He was 81.The cause of death was post-surgery complications, says a spokesman for Kennedy.Kennedy was the son of a union ironworker and accompanied him to jobsites as the teenage "water boy," later earning an engineering degree from Duke University.He then espoused the open or "merit shop" labor approach in co-founding BE&K in 1972. After his co-founders
Stanford Krawinkler Related Links: Helmut Krawinkler "lived and breathed" structural and earthquake engineering through teaching, research, analytic modeling, design and contributions to practice, says Gregory G. Deierlein, the John A. Blume professor of engineering at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.Krawinkler, an Austrian native who joined the Stanford faculty in 1973, died suddenly on April 16 in Los Altos, Calif., during treatment for a brain tumor. He was 72. Krawinkler—who held the Blume post until 2007, when he became professor emeritus—developed methodologies that changed how engineers evaluate seismic safety and damage potential. His work in the 1990s laid the foundation for the
Turner Construction Co. Related Links: Turner Construction Co. obituary of Howard S. Turner Howard S. Turner, a noted research chemist and industrial manager who left a 29-year corporate career to join the family-run Turner Construction Co., New York City, as president, died on April 25 in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 100. As CEO and chairman, he was the last Turner family member to lead the firm.Turner was tapped by his cousin—the son of H.C. Turner, who founded the contractor in 1902—to succeed him in 1965.While he had been a board member since the 1950s, Turner noted in a 2002
JOHN CHASEJohn S. Chase, an architect who broke barriers in Texas and elsewhere, died on March 29 in Houston after a long illness. He was 87. He served as CEO of John S. Chase Architect Inc., a firm he founded in 1952 after graduating from the University of Texas-Austin as its first black architecture student. Chase also was the first black architect to be licensed in Texas and the first to be admitted to the Texas Society of Architects and the American Institute of Architects' Houston chapter. Chase collaborated on a number of local and national landmarks, and he
James R. Endler, a veteran New York City construction executive on projects such as the World Trade Center, the Disney Epcot Center and London's Canary Wharf, died on March 24 in Manhattan at age 82. A West Point graduate, he also served as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After two decades with Tishman Realty & Construction Co., Endler retired in 1983 as president and chief operating officer. Endler then joined Lehrer McGovern Inc., which was later acquired by Bovis, as president. "Jim brought wisdom, maturity, experience and that West Point discipline to our young company," Peter