AECOM NYC office nabs MTA, Port Authority veterans

Dive Short:

  • AECOM has hired two executives with decades of infrastructure-linked working experience to aid lead its New York Metropolis-based group: Tom Prendergast, former chairman and CEO of the New York region Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Denise Berger, former main of operations of the Engineering Section of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
  • Prendergast has been named head of transit in just AECOM’s Layout and Consulting Expert services Americas (DCSA) and Berger joins as senior vice president and COO of AECOM’s Northeast Location, which incorporates the metropolitan New York Metropolis region. Both leaders have by now assumed their new roles, in accordance to a press assertion.
  • The hires occur at a essential instant for the long run of transportation and transit for the New York Metropolis region, reported Steve Morriss, DCSA president at AECOM, who mentioned that Congress will shortly look at proposals to reauthorize and extend the countrywide Repairing America’s Surface area Transportation (Rapid)​ Act and other infrastructure-linked laws.​ 

Dive Perception:

The acquisition of two this kind of superior-profile and seasoned infrastructure gurus will situation AECOM to faucet into substantial tasks coming online shortly in the Massive Apple. In January, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered his fiscal 12 months 2021 budget, which provides condition investment decision in transportation infrastructure and other condition-funded construction tasks to $275 billion, the major this kind of strategy in U.S. history.   

The 2021 budget will aid guidance New York Metropolis tasks like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s​ $fifty one.5 billion funds strategy, the $eleven billion Gateway Tunnel substitution task connecting New York and New Jersey and the $13 billion John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport modernization system.

Prendergast, who will be focused on AECOM’s transit industry across the Americas, put in most of his profession in

Tom Prendergast

Permission granted by AECOM

 

senior management roles with the MTA, the major agency of its kind in the state, serving more than 8.5 million every day end users. Named “one of the most powerful people today in New York Metropolis” by the New York Occasions in 2017, he oversaw the region’s sprawling transit network with an “unassuming fashion that brought praise from elected officers and transit advocates.​”

Berger will be focused on AECOM’s Northeast Location, with a principal emphasis on the enhancement and execution of tasks for New York Metro consumers. In accordance to LinkedIn, she has put in her 32-12 months-long profession at the Port Authority, with the final two as main of operations for the authority’s Engineering Section, which is comprised of extra than 550 architects and engineers and has a $one.three billion once-a-year budget. Berger has led numerous substantial-scale funds tasks for aviation, ports, tunnels, bridges, and terminals, Port Authority Trans-Hudson (Route) and the World Trade Centre. 

Denise Berger

Permission granted by AECOM

 

Berger was named an American Institute of Architects fellow in 2018 for her contributions in the enhancement of civic enhancements and governmental projects​. “Her revolutionary policies and applications produced groundbreaking outcomes, elevating the stature of architecture in the general public realm,” in accordance to AIA New York.

AECOM is not the only huge contracting agency that has established its sights on New York transit and transportation tasks. Bechtel, the country’s major engineering and construction company by earnings, recently opened an workplace in Manhattan to choose benefit of the infrastructure task demand there.

In a assertion, Chairman and CEO Brendan Bechtel reported the company is hunting to husband or wife with the metropolis in its target of “enhancing transportation, growing digital technologies and insuring entry to risk-free, trusted infrastructure.”