Schneider honored as top engineer of the year

Joe C. Schneider, vice president of land development for Hillwood Properties, was named 2009 Engineer of the Year by the Fort Worth Chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers.

Schneider will be honored during a banquet Feb. 21 at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in downtown Fort Worth, along with Young Engineer of the Year James P. Sappington IV, a project engineer with CMJ Engineering Inc., and Travis N. Attanasio, this year’s recipient of the Richard Van Trump Award.

The awards banquet will culminate National Engineers Week, a week-long annual nationwide celebration of the engineering profession, set this year for Feb. 15-21.

Other local winners are Devon Tiner, Fort Worth Branch of American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2009 Edmund Friedman Young Engineer of the Year; Scott Berman, recipient of the 2009 Central Region Outstanding Practitioner Advisor Award; and Engineer of the Year Edward Gutierrez and Young Engineer of the Year Brandon Long of the Mid-Cities Chapter of TSPE.

“I remember when I first joined TSPE in San Antonio in 1987, and went to my first Engineer of the Year banquet the following year,” Schneider said. “I was impressed by the many accomplishments he had achieved in his career, and the multitude of projects he had worked on, and his involvement in the community. I thought then that it would be really neat if I could look back some day and be ‘that guy.’ Looks like it has happened.”

During his 25-year career in Texas, Schneider worked with Brown and Gay Engineers, Pape-Dawson Engineers and Kimley-Horn & Associates before joining Hillwood 10 years ago. He has designed or managed design and construction on major projects around the state, including Sea World of Texas, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Marriott Rivercenter Hotel and The Park at Farmers Market. A 1984 graduate of Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a 1992 graduate of Our Lady of the Lake University with a Masters of Business Administration, Schneider is both a licensed professional engineer and a real estate broker.

At Hillwood, Schneider has been directly involved with Alliance Town Center, working with customers including Fidelity Investments, Vaquero, Bell Helicopter, Cinram, Motorola, KFS, Health Care Service Corp., Dyncorp and Peregrine Point LLC.

Schneider is past president of the Fort Worth Chapter of TSPE and has served the organization at state and national levels. A member of ASCE, Schneider is chairman of the Trinity River Authority’s Denton Creek Regional System Advisory Board. He is a former Engineer of the Year for the Bexar Chapter of TSPE and a Van Trump winner.

Sappington has worked in the field of geotechnical engineering and construction materials testing since 2004, through his time at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Engineering Department and Slater Engineering Inc. His expertise includes soils and geology, foundation engineering and related geotechnical and geological engineering. Some of his local projects include the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and the Joint Strike Fighter production facilities at Lockheed Martin Co.

A member of TSPE and ASCE, Sappington earned both master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Attanasio, an associate at A.N.A. Consultants LLC in Fort Worth, also received the Fort Worth Branch of the ASCE’s 2008 Citizen Engineer Award and the 2009 Central Region Younger Member Council Outstanding Young Civil Engineer in the Private Sector award for his community volunteer efforts in promoting engineering. He and Berman, a member of the Fort Worth Chapter of TSPE and Fort Worth Branch of ASCE, received their awards in January at the 2009 Central Region Younger Member Council in Denver.

A 2002 graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, Attanasio is a certified floodplain manager, specializing in the hydrology and hydraulics of storm water. He has worked on the design of waterlines and sanitary sewer systems for the new Dallas Cowboys stadium, designed ponds for the Montserrat residential subdivision in Fort Worth and procured a $9 million D/FW Airport hangar drainage project.

Tiner, a project manager for D/FW Airport, began his career with the airport in 1999. He has managed $38 million in rehabilitation projects for airfield pavements and bridges, storm water drainage systems and physical security upgrades. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from UT-Arlington in 2001.

President of JEA/HydroTech Engineering Inc., Gutierrez worked with the Missouri Pacific Railroad Co./Texas & Pacific Railway Co., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Garcia & Associates Engineering Inc. A specialist in hydrology and hydraulics, land planning and development and structural analysis, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso, and worked with the city of El Paso’s Department of Engineering.

Gutierrez is a past president of the DFW Mid-Cities Chapter of TSPE, and currently serves as a commissioner on the city of Arlington Planning and Zoning Board. His accomplishments include public roadway arterials for Stuart Drive and Rosedale Street in Fort Worth as well as storm drain systems at Meacham Field Airport.

Also a civil engineering graduate of UT-Arlington, Long began as an intern with Wier & Associates, and now works for the firm full time in general design of water, sanitary sewer, paving and drainage systems. A strong advocate for the MathCounts organization, Long has helped host the MathCounts math competition for local middle schools.

National Engineers Week Foundation is a formal coalition of more than 100 engineering, professional and technical societies and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. A fundamental part of Engineers Week is to help raise public awareness and appreciation of the engineering profession and engineers’ contributions to society.

Co-chaired this year by and Intel Corp. and the National Society of Professional Engineers, Engineers Week was founded in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers and is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering work force by encouraging an interest in engineering and technology careers among young students, and by promoting pre-college literacy in math and science.